Price, pjesme, intervjui...

[danas]

hvala

[danas]

tek sad vidjeh da sam sama -- na prethodnoj stranici -- vec postirala ledeni metak
'bem ti godine i senilnost

[danas]

tek sad vidjeh da sam sama -- na prethodnoj stranici -- vec postirala ledeni metak
'bem ti godine i senilnost

A, i ja, hajvan, znam da sam već vidjela negdje

ti si gora ja makar imam izgovor

[rikardoreis]

tek sad vidjeh da sam sama -- na prethodnoj stranici -- vec postirala ledeni metak
'bem ti godine i senilnost

A, i ja, hajvan, znam da sam već vidjela negdje

i ja taman kontam sta vam je...znam da je bilo, al znam vi nepogresive, te sam se poceo preispitivat

[Ergot]

The Sound Within
by Kate Fennell


I don’t know how old I was when I realised that it wasn’t only people with brown eyes that spoke that other strange language which I didn’t understand. I must have been around 7 because it was at that point that we left Maoinis Island, Conamara and moved to the metropolis of Galway. There I noticed that even the people with grey, blue and green eyes, the same as my friends’ and family’s, spoke this language. The two brown-eyed brothers in Maoinis school, known as the ‘come-day-go-days’ because of their frequent excursions to a faraway country called Thurles, had been the only children I had known until then who spoke and understood fluent English. I was soon to be immersed in this language and my family home was to become an island of Irish. Well, not entirely because my new city school had a rule where we were not allowed to speak English. Yet they had difficulty understanding my Irish.

The language police would circulate in the clós during break-times noting down the names of people who were singing the skipping rhyme “Vote, vote, vote for De Valera” in English. I couldn’t win. I was proud now to be beginning to converse in this new language but already it was a crime. While, at the same time, my Irish was the cause of much mirth since I pronounced guttural ‘ch’ with much more of an ‘ach’ sound than they. While their ‘chs’ were rendered as ‘ks’, mine were softer and more like the ‘ch’ in the Scottish ‘Loch Ness’. Teachers would not hesitate to make me stand up in class and speak to my new classmates in my native tongue so that they could hear this beautiful Irish. I didn’t know what they found beautiful about my rough accent, as I saw it. The language I was learning was a lot cleaner and less wild. All I knew was I never had any difficulty with those ‘agam, agat, aiges’ and spelling tests were easy. What did cause me confusion though was madra, tonnta, ag dul, páistí, ag cur fearthainne, tar anseo! and other phrases and verbs. My equivalents were gadhar, maidhmeanna, ag gabháil, gasúir, ag screachadh (báistí) and gabh i leith! respectively. I started to get the feeling that my Irish was wrong. I should be saying these words that were in the book. Their pronunciation of my language was totally different too. A slight feeling of shame and embarassment began to creep into my psyche. Why do I speak this language so differently from them? No child wants to be different but as soon as I would open my mouth in class the difference would be as plain as day.

Language is sound. It is the first sound that reverberates in the human body. The mouth and the vocal chords are shaped by these words that we utter. It is not grammar, syntax, or old, middle or modern. It doesn’t know borders, religions and it has no sense of time. It is the coming together of the mind, heart, and physical body to communicate with the world around us which since time immemorial has been inhabited my humans. Therefore it is the most common tool that humans use to communicate with one another. Apparently language was not always there. As cavemen we grunted and made noises to suit our intentions. Our way of communication now is the same but more sophisticated. It is still a basic expression of the human being.

Songs seem to carry these expressions most effectively over generations and geographical distances. Each tribe has dirges, each tribe has songs of victory, of pure joy, of love, of longing and so on. Song is a translation of feeling and thought into sound so as to communicate more directly with the heart and soul of others. When this is successful we often get the meaning without understanding the words. The sound suffices to close the gap between language and understanding.

When I was uprooted from Conamara, the world of sounds that I knew vanished almost completely. I started to make new sounds. They were crisper, sharper, harder and varied less in tone than my native tongue. There were a handful of people that I knew who spoke native Irish like me. Each time we would converse I felt that we were excluding others because very often they would be left with blank faces. With English it was the contrary. Everybody understood me when I spoke. It was inclusive. It could be a beautiful language in poetry and prose. But the sound of it never became my sound, I felt. It felt alien to me.

In my life today these are the sounds I have to make to be understood in the main. But they don’t make me feel whole. I feel I am speaking from my head. When I speak Irish I feel I am speaking from my heart. It is not surprising, therefore, that I was drawn to the Slavic languages to find the sounds that I missed. Russian has those ‘shhs’ and ‘chs’ and ‘nyas’ and thick consonants that I was used to mouthing from a young age. It is an old, rich and very poetic language. I fell in love with this language, learnt it, lived in Russia and felt that a hole had been considerably filled. After all, you can live there and everyone speaks it, not just in a pocket somewhere where there is little employment and a dependence on grants, but everywhere and, importantly, they are proud of it. Yet the gnawing feeling of lacking something was to return later and 20 years after leaving Conamara I returned for my fix. I wanted to live in a world where my original sounds were understood not by a select few but by everyone from the postman to the county councillor. I didn’t want to be seen as a freak for speaking this ‘dead language’ as I had often felt while studying and living in Dublin. I wanted to hear the same sounds returned. Now my heart was singing in earnest. I had needed to be reconnected. The fact that it was an emotional experience as much as a linguistic one was not lost on me.

In Ireland Irish is more of an emotional question than a linguistic one. The sound of Irish seems to be lodged in the sub-conscious mind of our people. That might explain why discussions about Irish are more of an emotional nature than about the intricacies of the language itself. If I had a service which gave a listening ear to those who wanted to vent their frustration, disappointment and anger at the way Irish was taught to them in school I would be able to retire now on the profits. If, on the other hand, each payment was withdrawn when someone told me how they loved Irish and how they wished they could speak it or were attending nightclasses or were foreign but had learnt it like a native, well I’m afraid I would then be back where I started. It is such an emotionally-charged subject in Ireland it nearly ceases to be seen as a European language with a culture and a history as unique as Spanish or Portuguese. The fact that Irish is the third written European language after Greek and Latin or that it was Irish monks who first separated words seldom arises as part of a discussion about Irish. It’s the longing to know it or the very hate of it. Rarely is there apathy towards it. Never is there as much emotion expressed in relation to the other languages they failed to learn at school or didn’t enjoy. And even less knowledge about them. The sounds that I made as a child are still ringing in our ears and pounding in our hearts waiting to be released.

This was highlighted for me recently when I was asked to say a Prayer of the Faithful in Irish at a friend’s wedding. The congregation was reading from their pamphlets in English and when I uttered the short prayer in Irish there was some surprise. Nothing could have prepared me for what happened afterwards. If I ever felt what it was like to be a popstar, well I had my moment. The amount of congratulations and gushing praise that I received could have been equal to that of an MTV award winner. There were outbursts such as “Oh it’s so beautiful to hear the Irish spoken; such a beautiful sound! Oh your Irish is beautiful! Oh I wish I could speak it! I’ve forgotten it all. I used to love it at school!” or “My teacher was terrible at school.” and so on. Barely thirty seconds of Irish had eclipsed two hours of English. I wished I could have given them more or waved a wand so that their Irish would come flooding effortlessly back and this barrier from ourselves would be lifted. These are the moments when being an Irish speaker is a warm feeling. Yet it is not always so.

I fear there are many misperceptions about native Irish speakers in Ireland today. Broadly speaking, this seems to arise out of a misunderstanding between those who live in the Gaeltacht and those, to use an Irish-language term, who live in the Galltacht, i.e those who have been brought up in an English-speaking area and speak English in the home. This gap is rapidly being reduced because of the proliferation of gaelscoileanna, the popularity of TG4, our growing confidence and improved economic climate. The end result of this is that the stigma of speaking Irish has lessened but confusion between the camps still remains.

I’ve witnessed many people in the Galltacht expressing the belief that Gaeltacht people have a real sense of pride about their language and would prefer to keep the ‘blow-ins’ out. This may be true of some but the truth is that a feeling of inferiority is rampant among native Irish speakers and has been for centuries. If, as I have previously alluded to, hundreds of years of its existence has penetrated our psyche and and continues to draw us towards it, equally the hundreds of years of persecution and suffering linked with it have left their indelible mark on Irish speakers in the Gaeltacht today. Many instances have made this plain to me.

For example, several years ago, I was a wandering spectator at an outdoor event during an Irish language festival, Pléaraca Chonamara, in the heart of Conamara. A local woman, within earshot of me, was reprimanding her young child. It may be surprising to know that the language she used with her child was English even though she normally spoke Irish. You could tell by her quite broken English that she rarely had reason to speak it. I got the impression that she used English because, I, a stranger whom she mistook for an English-speaking ‘blow-in’, was standing nearby. Instead of feeling proud that her mother tongue and everyday language was Irish she appeared to feel ashamed of it. I approached her and made chit-chat about the weather in Irish. She was taken aback but smiled and answered me in Irish.

English is felt to be the ‘better’ language by many in the Gaeltacht. The teenagers speak English while they are eating their sandwiches outside the local shop at lunchtime in Carraroe. They speak English when they are playing in the yard. On saluting a stranger in Conamara, English is more often than not the language used. There is a shyness about using the language unless we are sure the other person converses in it comfortably. Amongst the younger generation English is considered cool, Irish not. In the past English meant being educated and getting on in life. Understandably, it is hard to shake off those shackles.

Usually, in a circle of Irish speakers, if one person joins who doesn’t speak the language the conversation will turn to English. This, of course, changes the dynamic. It feels strange for me to speak English to my siblings or to close friends whose native language is Irish. But because we are bilingual and communication is the key the minority language gets dropped sooner. It is the lesser of the two in practical life and so has a very fragile existence even on a daily basis. For a language to thrive there has to be a feeling of it to be equal to any other language around it.

The bridge between the Gaeltacht and the Galltacht is a wide one and Irish has often been looked upon as the poor cousin. Certainly when I was on the receiving end of the comment recently at a party “You speak Irish and you’re not a geek?!” I realised the gulf between the two worlds was far too wide for any Bille Teanga or well-meaning Minister for the Gaeltacht to narrow. In brief, Irish comes with baggage. And so there was only one thing for the ugly duckling to do.

I still had my blas when I returned to live in Conamara for a few years which meant that after the preliminary round of questioning to ascertain my stock I was treated like one of their own. I don’t think I would have had the same experience if I had been a non-native speaker from, let’s say, Tipperary. That is natural. A language is not simply the words you say to someone else to convey a message. There is a whole attitude and way of expressing yourself that is unique to that language. Each language has its own nuances from particular words to body language to the type of humour that belongs to that language. Similarly with Irish, our points of reference are different to that in the English-speaking world. We have different heroes, different connections and a different vocabulary. Words themselves and how they are used is something that the ordinary person pays attention to everyday when speaking. They are the tools we use to construct the image of ourselves that we would like reflected for others. As a result, I think it’s true to say that we feel and express ourselves differently when speaking different languages.

Interestingly, when I am in England or in central Europe even though I speak and understand their languages I don’t feel that connection with them that I feel when I travel to countries further East. The Eastern outlook on life sits more comfortably with me than that of the continent or Northern Europe. I always feel that the people further east are more like people from Irish-speaking Conamara. Equally, I feel more at home in Mediterranean countries than in English-speaking ones. I have pondered this and tried to work out why this is so. As we know, the roots of our language are not Germanic or Nordic nor even descended from Latin. If it is true that Irish is a Celtic language, a tribe that is believed to have had origins near Czech and up as far as the Black Sea, then it seems that a language carries with it more than sounds. The language reflects the way the people think, feel and see their place in the world. Generations of shaping the language means generations of people sharing a simliar worldview which their language serves to put across. English cannot express us in the same way because it has been shaped by different peoples who adored different gods. We have undoubtedly shaped the English that was brought here and everyday I hear expressions which are direct translations from the Irish.

Yet, on more than one occasion, I have met people who feel cheated because their native language is English and not Irish. Deep down they feel Irish is their language but they do not speak it. English doesn’t seem to serve its purpose for them when they try to express who they are. It seems our native tongue has a grasp on us that even we cannot comprehend.

Personally, I often wish I only had one native language. It would simplify my internal and external worlds. As it is, I feel I am living in two cultures. If I would like to participate in the world that understands sean-nós, tradition, turns-of-phrase in Irish, lyrical descriptions of the landscape I grew up in, well then I would be living in the Irish-speaking world, which means the Gaeltacht. If on the other hand I would like to be a part of a lively, young, modern, fast-changing city-life then I would be living in an English-speaking world or abroad where Irish is not the everyday sound. To live in either culture involves a decisive geographical choice which leaves me feeling split in two.

I sometimes try to join the two by attending Irish-language events in the city or going to places where the music and traditions are alive but I’m afraid it doesn’t fulfill me. It exaggerates that feeling of being a dinosaur in an oasis. Along with that the Irish that is learnt in the Galltacht, an Caighdeán Oifigiúil differs considerably from my native tongue. It differs in terms of sound and vocabulary. It’s rare that someone has the same richness and fluency if they haven’t had the opportunity to spend time in a Gaeltacht. Sometimes I feel that it impedes real deep communication in Irish because I am aware that our sounds are different and there are grammar mistakes to overlook and so on. I cannot fully relax in the conversation because I am aware I could use an expression that they may not know and then it turns into a language class when all I want to do is converse with my fellow countrymen!

Native Irish also has its own inherent music which is mostly missing from the Caighdeán Oifigiúil. English sounds are much thinner than the Irish so it is often difficult for an English speaker to make them. My great sadness is that the music and the richness of the language is dying with the native speakers and the new language pronounces its ‘chs’ as ‘ks’. Noone is to blame, it is simply the way things are.

I am aware that as I write the above, Irish could be substituted with Konkani or Ruthenian or any of the minority languages in the world which are dying off faster than species of insects if you believe the newspapers and the linguists. It is not unique to Ireland. In fact what is unique these days compared to the ancient past is that most of us are monolingual. The rich tapestry of accents and dialects in Ireland tells of a much more varied linguistic plateau in times gone by. In many countries this is true today. Although we now only have two, the language question in Ireland is still a complex one. I watch the Nuacht sometimes and wonder how it must feel not to be able to understand the reader who is purportedly speaking the first official language of the country. I am sure many English speakers feel let down by the way Irish was taught to them in school. Personally, I feel privileged to know Irish from my birth and for it to have been shaped by the rocks and rough seas of Conamara. It has certainly made my world richer.

It is also strange to be living in a time when the language of my birth is by all appearances dying, a culture dying with it. One may ask, why bother to save this language which is perhaps for many nothing more than a nostalgic vestige of the past? Maybe because Irish is our sound. Passed on from our ancestors, it is ingrained in the crevices of the monastery walls, Viking ports, Norman castles, thatched cottages and even the luxury duplexes. All we have to do is look at our placenames and know that every hillock was baptised by the people who lived and worked the land for hundreds of years. They had an intimate knowledge of and a communion with their surroundings. Just as our ecosystem changes when another species dies so does our conscious world when a language, which is a key to an entire culture, dies. The effect of losing our language is a subtle shift in our harmony with ourselves. It will not make headlines but its survival is necessary for our fundamental feeling of belonging and our understanding of who we really are.

This article was published in the Irish Times, March 2004.
It is extracted from the book 'Who Needs Irish? Reflections on the Importance of the Irish Language Today'
Murchaidh, Ciaran Mac (ed.) Publisher Veritas Publications ISBN 1853907774

For more information: [email protected]

[danas]

QUESTIONS FOR HA JIN
A Novel Perspective
Interview by DEBORAH SOLOMON
NYT; Published: April 10, 2005

I see you will be participating in PEN's first festival of international writers, which will be held in New York next week. Do you find it helpful to meet other writers?

Not always. It depends on whom I meet. But basically I prefer being alone. When you are with a lot of other people, they can share your guilt. If you are alone, you have to face yourself and think clearly. Your mind is sharper when you are alone.

Then why are you going?

Because I was asked to be on a panel whose topic is something like ''The Power of the Pen.''

Does a pen have power? I imagine that few people believe the pen is mightier than the sword.

That is a foolish saying. A sword is definitely mightier than a pen. A sword destroys. A pen is not a weapon. Writing is the opposite of fighting. It is a nurturing force.

And yet, as an acclaimed American novelist who has been able to publish only one novel, ''Waiting,'' in your native China, you tend to be viewed as a voice of political dissent.

If I wrote in Chinese, my books would be censored in China. It's crazy. That is why I write in English. Writing in English makes me feel crippled, but at least I know nothing will be cut.

You didn't move to this country until you were in your late 20's. It must have been difficult to teach yourself English.

When I lived in China I followed the radio. They had the learner's program every day for half an hour. It was very simple. They would teach you to speak English by saying things like ''This is a table. Is that a chair? Long live, Chairman Mao!''

Your most recent novel, ''War Trash,'' stakes out new political ground by exploring the lives of Chinese P.O.W.'s held captive by Americans during the Korean War.

It's an antiwar novel, which is why many people will not care for it. But you can't please everyone. I am writing for an ideal reader.

Do you think most writers are writing for only one person?

Yes.

And is that person the inevitably hypercritical mother?

Oh, no! No way. My mother doesn't even read English, so how could I be writing for her? I read a lot when I am writing, and then I begin to speak to that writer. When I wrote ''War Trash,'' I learned a lot from Dostoyevsky. I thought of him as I wrote.

Do you feel any obligation to speak out on politics these days?

No. Very rarely is a novelist a public intellectual. I don't think I should have a public role. I teach my writing class at Boston University, and that for me is public enough.

We don't really have public intellectuals in this country anymore. We now have talking heads.

Yes. I would be happy to hear from novelists like Toni Morrison or Saul Bellow, but you don't see them on talk shows. No one asks them for their opinions.

Why do you think novelists have so little political influence in this country?

Perhaps because most of them teach. In Europe, creative writing is rarely taught. But here, novelists are spread out at universities across the country. They don't meet one another.

Except at prize ceremonies. I see that ''War Trash'' just won the PEN/Faulkner Award.

It's a big award. But an award is a momentary thing. It makes you happy for about a month.

But all happiness is momentary, as the poets like to point out.

That is very true. Even a book is momentary. When you finish one book, you have to write another one. There is no solution.

What is your idea of perfect happiness?

I often tell my wife and son that the best life for me would be to get up in the morning and go to a cafe and have coffee and meet friends and read the newspaper. But you can't do it every day, because if you did, your life would be effortless. And an effortless life is a meaningless life.

[water]

ovo me podsjeti na predivne & pradavne recenzije longplejki pere lukovica u nekadashnjem prvom yu rock magazinu dzuboks krajem sedamdesetih und pochetkom osamdesetih......shta bih dao da mi je opet imati tu kolekciju...:):)

http://www.popboks.com/dzuboksarhiva.shtml

uzivaj brale

[Nancy Drew]

...

[water]

evo neki ce aprisiejt ovaj mali esej

Click Here!
fighting words
God Is Not Great
Religion poisons everything.
By Christopher Hitchens
Posted Wednesday, April 25, 2007, at 1:31 PM ET



From: Christopher Hitchens
Subject: Religion Poisons Everything
Posted Wednesday, April 25, 2007, at 1:31 PM ET

There are four irreducible objections to religious faith: that it wholly misrepresents the origins of man and the cosmos, that because of this original error it manages to combine the maximum of servility with the maximum of solipsism, that it is both the result and the cause of dangerous sexual repression, and that it is ultimately grounded on wish-thinking.

I do not think it is arrogant of me to claim that I had already discovered these four objections (as well as noticed the more vulgar and obvious fact that religion is used by those in temporal charge to invest themselves with authority) before my boyish voice had broken. I am morally certain that millions of other people came to very similar conclusions in very much the same way, and I have since met such people in hundreds of places, and in dozens of different countries. Many of them never believed, and many of them abandoned faith after a difficult struggle. Some of them had blinding moments of un-conviction that were every bit as instantaneous, though perhaps less epileptic and apocalyptic (and later more rationally and more morally justified) than Saul of Tarsus on the Damascene road. And here is the point, about myself and my co-thinkers. Our belief is not a belief. Our principles are not a faith. We do not rely solely upon science and reason, because these are necessary rather than sufficient factors, but we distrust anything that contradicts science or outrages reason. We may differ on many things, but what we respect is free inquiry, openmindedness, and the pursuit of ideas for their own sake. We do not hold our convictions dogmatically: the disagreement between Professor Stephen Jay Gould and Professor Richard Dawkins, concerning "punctuated evolution" and the unfilled gaps in post-Darwinian theory, is quite wide as well as quite deep, but we shall resolve it by evidence and reasoning and not by mutual excommunication. (My own annoyance at Professor Dawkins and Daniel Dennett, for their cringe-making proposal that atheists should conceitedly nominate themselves to be called "brights," is a part of a continuous argument.) We are not immune to the lure of wonder and mystery and awe: we have music and art and literature, and find that the serious ethical dilemmas are better handled by Shakespeare and Tolstoy and Schiller and Dostoyevsky and George Eliot than in the mythical morality tales of the holy books. Literature, not scripture, sustains the mind and—since there is no other metaphor—also the soul. We do not believe in heaven or hell, yet no statistic will ever find that without these blandishments and threats we commit more crimes of greed or violence than the faithful. (In fact, if a proper statistical inquiry could ever be made, I am sure the evidence would be the other way.) We are reconciled to living only once, except through our children, for whom we are perfectly happy to notice that we must make way, and room. We speculate that it is at least possible that, once people accepted the fact of their short and struggling lives, they might behave better toward each other and not worse. We believe with certainty that an ethical life can be lived without religion. And we know for a fact that the corollary holds true—that religion has caused innumerable people not just to conduct themselves no better than others, but to award themselves permission to behave in ways that would make a brothel-keeper or an ethnic cleanser raise an eyebrow.

Most important of all, perhaps, we infidels do not need any machinery of reinforcement. We are those who Blaise Pascal took into account when he wrote to the one who says, "I am so made that I cannot believe."

There is no need for us to gather every day, or every seven days, or on any high and auspicious day, to proclaim our rectitude or to grovel and wallow in our unworthiness. We atheists do not require any priests, or any hierarchy above them, to police our doctrine. Sacrifices and ceremonies are abhorrent to us, as are relics and the worship of any images or objects (even including objects in the form of one of man's most useful innovations: the bound book). To us no spot on earth is or could be "holier" than another: to the ostentatious absurdity of the pilgrimage, or the plain horror of killing civilians in the name of some sacred wall or cave or shrine or rock, we can counterpose a leisurely or urgent walk from one side of the library or the gallery to another, or to lunch with an agreeable friend, in pursuit of truth or beauty. Some of these excursions to the bookshelf or the lunch or the gallery will obviously, if they are serious, bring us into contact with belief and believers, from the great devotional painters and composers to the works of Augustine, Aquinas, Maimonides, and Newman. These mighty scholars may have written many evil things or many foolish things, and been laughably ignorant of the germ theory of disease or the place of the terrestrial globe in the solar system, let alone the universe, and this is the plain reason why there are no more of them today, and why there will be no more of them tomorrow. Religion spoke its last intelligible or noble or inspiring words a long time ago: either that or it mutated into an admirable but nebulous humanism, as did, say, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a brave Lutheran pastor hanged by the Nazis for his refusal to collude with them. We shall have no more prophets or sages from the ancient quarter, which is why the devotions of today are only the echoing repetitions of yesterday, sometimes ratcheted up to screaming point so as to ward off the terrible emptiness.

While some religious apology is magnificent in its limited way—one might cite Pascal—and some of it is dreary and absurd—here one cannot avoid naming C. S. Lewis—both styles have something in common, namely the appalling load of strain that they have to bear. How much effort it takes to affirm the incredible! The Aztecs had to tear open a human chest cavity every day just to make sure that the sun would rise. Monotheists are supposed to pester their deity more times than that, perhaps, lest he be deaf. How much vanity must be concealed—not too effectively at that—in order to pretend that one is the personal object of a divine plan? How much self-respect must be sacrificed in order that one may squirm continually in an awareness of one's own sin? How many needless assumptions must be made, and how much contortion is required, to receive every new insight of science and manipulate it so as to "fit" with the revealed words of ancient man-made deities? How many saints and miracles and councils and conclaves are required in order first to be able to establish a dogma and then—after infinite pain and loss and absurdity and cruelty—to be forced to rescind one of those dogmas? God did not create man in his own image. Evidently, it was the other way about, which is the painless explanation for the profusion of gods and religions, and the fratricide both between and among faiths, that we see all about us and that has so retarded the development of civilization.

The mildest criticism of religion is also the most radical and the most devastating one. Religion is man-made. Even the men who made it cannot agree on what their prophets or redeemers or gurus actually said or did. Still less can they hope to tell us the "meaning" of later discoveries and developments which were, when they began, either obstructed by their religions or denounced by them. And yet—the believers still claim to know! Not just to know, but to know everything. Not just to know that god exists, and that he created and supervised the whole enterprise, but also to know what "he" demands of us—from our diet to our observances to our sexual morality. In other words, in a vast and complicated discussion where we know more and more about less and less, yet can still hope for some enlightenment as we proceed, one faction—itself composed of mutually warring factions—has the sheer arrogance to tell us that we already have all the essential information we need. Such stupidity, combined with such pride, should be enough on its own to exclude "belief" from the debate. The person who is certain, and who claims divine warrant for his certainty, belongs now to the infancy of our species. It may be a long farewell, but it has begun and, like all farewells, should not be protracted.

The argument with faith is the foundation and origin of all arguments, because it is the beginning—but not the end—of all arguments about philosophy, science, history, and human nature. It is also the beginning—but by no means the end—of all disputes about the good life and the just city. Religious faith is, precisely because we are still-evolving creatures, ineradicable. It will never die out, or at least not until we get over our fear of death, and of the dark, and of the unknown, and of each other. For this reason, I would not prohibit it even if I thought I could. Very generous of me, you may say. But will the religious grant me the same indulgence? I ask because there is a real and serious difference between me and my religious friends, and the real and serious friends are sufficiently honest to admit it. I would be quite content to go to their children's bar mitzvahs, to marvel at their Gothic cathedrals, to "respect" their belief that the Koran was dictated, though exclusively in Arabic, to an illiterate merchant, or to interest myself in Wicca and Hindu and Jain consolations. And as it happens, I will continue to do this without insisting on the polite reciprocal condition—which is that they in turn leave me alone. But this, religion is ultimately incapable of doing. As I write these words, and as you read them, people of faith are in their different ways planning your and my destruction, and the destruction of all the hard-won human attainments that I have touched upon. Religion poisons everything.
Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair and the author of God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything.

Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2165033/

Copyright 2007 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC

[water]

evo jos jedan malo drugaciji ali dobar

Click Here!
fighting words
Suck It Up
After the shootings came an orgy of mawkishness, sloppiness, and false sentiment.
By Christopher Hitchens
Posted Tuesday, April 24, 2007, at 2:29 PM ET

When people in America say "no man is an island," as Joan Didion once put it, they think they are quoting Ernest Hemingway. But when Hemingway annexed the seductive words from John Donne's Devotions, quoting the whole paragraph on his title page and borrowing from it one of the 20th century's most resonant titles, he did not literally mean to say that all funerals are the same or that all deaths are to be regretted equally. He meant that if the Spanish republic went under to fascism, we should all be the losers. It was a matter both of solidarity and of self-interest: Stand by your friends now, or be shamed (and deserted in your turn) later on.

The grisly events at Virginia Tech involved no struggle, no sacrifice, no great principle. They were random and pointless. Those who died were not soldiers in any cause. They were not murdered by our enemies. They were not martyrs. But—just to take one example from the exhausting national sob fest of the past few days—here is how the bells were tolled for them at another national seat of learning. The president of Cornell University, David J. Skorton, ordered the chimes on his campus to be rung 33 times before addressing a memorial gathering. Thirty-three times? Yes. "We are here," announced the head of an institution of higher learning:

for all of those who are gone, for all 33. We are here for the 32 who have passed from the immediate to another place, not by their own choice. We are also here for the one who has also passed. We are one.

For an academic president to have equated 32 of his fellow humans with their murderer in an orgy of "one-ness" was probably the stupidest thing that happened last week, but not by a very wide margin. Almost everybody in the country seems to have taken this non-event as permission to talk the starkest nonsense. And why not? Since the slaughter raised no real issues, it was a blank slate on which anyone could doodle. Try this, from the eighth straight day of breathless coverage in the New York Times. The person being quoted is the Rev. Susan Verbrugge of Blacksburg Presbyterian Church, addressing her congregation in an attempt, in the silly argot of the day, "to make sense of the senseless":

Ms. Verbrugge recounted breaking through the previous week's numbness as she stopped on a morning walk and found herself yelling at the mountains and at God. Though her shouts were initially met with silence, she said, she soon was reassured by the simplest of things, the chirping of birds.

"God was doing something about the world," she said. "Starting with my own heart, I could see good."

Yes, it's always about you, isn't it? (By the way, I'd watch that habit of yelling at mountains and God in the greater Blacksburg area if I were you. Some idiot might take it for a "warning sign.") When piffle like this gets respectful treatment from the media, we can guess that it's not because of the profundity of the emotion but rather because of its extreme shallowness. Those birds were singing just as loudly and just as sweetly when the bullets were finding their targets.

But the quest for greater "meaning" was unstoppable. Will Korean-Americans be "targeted"? (Thanks for putting the idea into the head of some nutcase, but really, what an insulting question!) Last week, I noticed from my window in Washington, D.C., that the Russian trade mission had lowered its flag. President Putin's commercial envoys, too, want to be a part of it all: surely proof in itself of how utterly painless all this vicarious "pain" really is. (And now, what are they going to do for Boris Yeltsin?)

On Saturday night, I watched disgustedly as the president of the United States declined to give his speech to the White House Correspondents Dinner on the grounds that this was no time to be swapping jokes and satires. (What? No words of courage? No urging us to put on a brave face and go shopping or visit Disneyland?) Everyone in the room knew that this was a dismal cop-out, but then everyone in the room also knew that our own profession was co-responsible. If the president actually had performed his annual duty, there were people in the press corps who would have affected shock and accused him of "insensitivity." So, this was indeed a moment of unity—everyone united in mawkishness and sloppiness and false sentiment. From now on, any president who wants to duck the occasion need only employ a staffer on permanent weepy-watch. In any given week, there is sure to be some maimed orphan, or splattered home, or bus plunge, or bunch of pilgrims put to the sword. Best to be ready in advance to surrender all critical faculties and whip out the national hankie.

It was my friend Adolph Reed who first pointed out this tendency to what he called "vicarious identification." At the time of the murder of Lisa Steinberg in New York in 1987, he was struck by the tendency of crowds to show up for funerals of people they didn't know, often throwing teddy bears over the railings and in other ways showing that (as well as needing to get a life) they in some bizarre way seemed to need to get a death. The hysteria that followed a traffic accident in Paris involving a disco princess—surely the most hyped non-event of all time—seemed to suggest an even wider surrender to the overwhelming need to emote: The less at stake, the greater the grieving.

And surrender may be the keyword here. What, for instance, is this dismal rush to lower the national colors all the damned time? At times of real crisis and genuine emergency, such as the assault on our society that was mounted almost six years ago, some emotion could be pardoned. But even then, the signs of sickliness and foolishness were incipient (as in Billy Graham's disgusting sermon at the National Cathedral where he spoke of the victims being "called into eternity"). If we did this every time, the flag would spend its entire time drooping. One should express a decent sympathy for the families and friends of the murdered, a decent sympathy that ought to be accompanied by a decent reticence. Because Virginia Tech—alas for poor humanity—was a calamity with no implications beyond itself. In the meantime, and in expectation of rather stiffer challenges to our composure, we might practice nailing the colors to the mast rather than engaging in a permanent dress rehearsal for masochism and the lachrymose.
Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair and the author of the newly published God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything.

Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2164914/

Copyright 2007 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC

[repeater]

Orhan Pamuk
Neighbourhoods



For Orhan Pamuk, the idea of "neighbourliness" is double−edged: in international relations, it signals peace and cultural engagement, but in society, particularly in the Turkish tradition, it implies provincialism and suspicion. Addressing the Eurozine network, Pamuk holds that cultural journals' role should be to promote non−conformism.

There is nothing I like more than to grab two or three new issues of cultural journals, withdraw into my study and start to read. What do I then expect as a reader? To me, cultural journals constitute a space where culture resists. Or should resist. I find it highly disturbing when cultural journals try to compete with – and are influenced by – the language and interests of the mainstream media. Cultural journals should reject the issues brought up by the big media and instead insist on dwelling on their own problems, their own concerns. Sometimes the language of the big media appeals to us; sometimes the tabloids catch our attention, which we might like. Nevertheless, cultural journals shouldn't be pursuing issues covered by the bigger papers and television, who cater to a large audience. Unfortunately, it's exactly this development that we've been forced to follow in recent years, especially in some of the more significant cultural journals. To attract readers' interest, they too pursue the issues raised, investigated, and blown up by the big media. Perhaps in doing so they do even attract some interest – temporarily. But in the long run they just become like the big media. What I'd like to see when I open one of these journals is exactly those things I can't find anywhere else.

Another concern of mine regarding cultural journals is that they are too much under the influence of the Anglo-Saxon world. Cultural journals should be communicating much more intensely with other cultures, cultures close by, and with the culture in which they are embedded and which they address. They could counter the general tendencies of the culture industry; they could and should point to other ways, to alternatives to the hegemony of Anglo-American culture.

We are here to talk about "neighbourhoods", a concept that for Turkey should include the European Union. However, we haven't yet become a fully-fledged neighbour of the EU. Moreover, among neighbouring countries, it's only Greece with whom we're on reasonably good terms. We're improving, but can't really claim to have good relations with our neighbours. Instead, we're in a constant state of conflict with them. One might almost say that we're solving our problems with our European neighbours simply to get into the EU.

"Neighbourliness" is usually regarded to be something intrinsically good. And yes, in this meeting we may extol, celebrate, and believe in neighbourly behaviour; to do so would certainly be correct. For international peace, neighbourhood is an important concept and good neighbourly relations are necessary. However, I'd still like to question a certain concept of neighbourliness that is well established in our culture and passed on through wise sayings and proverbs.

Yes, Turkey does need to get along well with its neighbours. But in the cultural context, I have some problems with neighbourhood, as I'm sure you have too. For me, living in a modern city essentially means being free from the pressure that comes from having neighbours. The neighbour is a person we should love, and who, if we don't, informs on us, polices us, denounces us for faults in our attitude and behaviour. The dominant discourse in our culture, which says that one should get along with one's neighbours, is very much about accommodating to the neighbour (let's get along with him or her so he or she doesn't denounce us). The discourse makes us think that this is the sensible thing to do.

Modernity, or the yearning to escape from the provincial, to some extent represents a wish to avoid the neighbour, to avoid the prying and controlling eyes of the community.

In international relations, I do find neighbourhood an important concept. I value it. I think Turkey should get along with its neighbours. But those of us who live in big cities should be glad, in contrast to small-town dwellers, that we are rid of our neighbours. Of course, from time to time we knock on our neighbour's door when we run out of coffee and ask to borrow some. As pleasant as this might be, it also means opening our door to the control mechanisms of society.

In Turkish, there's the saying that "a neighbour knows what a neighbour feels". Here, we think of a neighbour as someone who incessantly keeps a check on the other, who oversees, who reports to others whatever excesses he observes, scribbling them down in a notebook and saving them there only to bring them up again at a bad moment. Underlying this is the custom in Ottoman society where the state assigned the task of finding the culprit of a crime to the community; where the representative of state authority could not infiltrate the community, in the way we know from Western culture and literature; where a community culture existed in which everyone was policeman and informer; where communities were transformed by Ottoman society – which attributed great importance to the millet system – into environments in which everyone policed everyone else. That is where the concept of neighbourhood comes from, a concept that we cherish greatly even today. We Turkish people celebrate the concept of "neighbourliness", we take great care to get along with our neighbours. However, it's important to note that, because of the communal society, this also means getting along well with the state, with the police, with the army. Because of neighbours, because of concern with the question "What would the neighbours say?", everyone keeps their controversial thoughts, their dissent, to themselves.

Let's love our neighbour, let's love Greece, Iran, Syria. Let's enter the EU and live in peace. But let's not abandon our own thoughts, our own identity, our own personality just because we're worried about "what the neighbours would say", just because we should be getting along well with our neighbours.

Cultural journals essentially address the most developed and refined people in a society, the ones with the highest level of education and income. The culture of neighbourhood, on the other hand, is a concept that serves the needs of people who can't survive alone in a modern city, who need the moral, even the cultural and religious support of their neighbours to keep a hold in the modern urban environment. Of course we should be on good terms with our neighbour, but let's not therefore sacrifice our thoughts, our controversial ideas. When our parents quarrel at home, it may be okay to caution "Shh, shh, what would the neighbours think?", but the fear of the neighbour could lead us to forsake our ideas and to think like everybody else. To come back to where I started, what we expect from cultural journals is that they shouldn't lead us to think in conformity with the rest.

I expect this conference, as well as the accession of Turkey into the European Union, to proceed along these lines. Each one of us should be thinking a little differently; we shouldn't resemble one another; we should take pride in our neighbourly difference, not in our resemblance. Our neighbour shouldn't question our difference. That's the kind of world we yearn for. And that's the reason why the concept of neighbourhood is in the title of this meeting: because we want to live in a world of diversity.

[Nancy Drew]

...

[Orhanowski]

Kolumna Borisa Dežulovića

Kako je Tuđman preko noći postao diktator

14. april 2007.


Treba li povijesna distanca da bi se govorilo o suvremenoj povijesti? U sređenim civilizacijama to je pitanje bespredmetno, jer njihove historiografije nemaju problema s kalendarom. U većini tih kultura točno u ponoć počinje novi dan, nakon čega danas prelazi u jučer i odlazi u povijest. Osnovna je tako razlika između nas i njih u tome što kojekakvi gubitnici, kabadahije, patuljci i hohštapleri u nas postaju povijesni velikani preko noći - kad pošteni svijet spava - zato što se noću ne vidi, dok u normalnim historiografijama povijesne ličnosti nastaju preko noći samo zato što je noć po svojoj geofizičkoj definiciji povijesna distanca između danas i jučer.


U Hrvatskoj, recimo, veliko je pitanje koju povijest klinci trebaju učiti u školama. Problem nije lak, jer Hrvati ne znaju ni gdje povijest počinje, ni gdje završava. Počinje li povijest onog trenutka kad je prvi Hrvat sišao sa stabla i otkrio vatru, polugu, točak i kravatu, ili kad je Big Brother s nebesa razdvojio svjetlost od tame, od blata napravio prvog Hrvata, a od njegovog rebra ono neobično čovjekoliko biće dugog jezika?

Ili povijest svijeta počinje 1990., kad je Franjo Tuđman mrtav ozbiljan prebacio preko sebe onu smiješnu lentu, nakon čega je, kako je poznato, u vatrometu nad Jelačićevim placom Velikim praskom nastao svemir? Zabunu unosi i teorija po kojoj time, zapravo, povijest završava. Naročito kad se zna da u nas ni Drugi svjetski rat još nije završio.

Najnovije diskusije na tu temu izazvali su tradicionalni sezonski udžbenici za osnovne škole, koji od sljedeće godine neće donijeti samo najnovije vijesti iz 1941., već i poneku svježiju. Trebaju li, dakle, djeca u 8. razredu osnovne škole učiti da je Franjo Tuđman ukinuo Dinamo i preimenovao ga u Croatiju, kako se navodi u novim udžbenicima?

Ja bih kao hajdukovac mogao grintati što se Dinamo - nakon što je službeno proglašen neugaslom luči hrvatstva u doba komunističkog mraka i žrtvom sistema u kojemu, eto, nije smio biti prvakom - sada pravi i veličanstvenom žrtvom sistema koji mu je poklonio barem tri-četiri titule prvaka. Priča bi bila poštena kad bi Dinamo Hrvatskom nogometnom savezu vratio sve titule koje je osvojio kao Croatia, ali to ionako nije važno za našu priču. Što se mene tiče, djeca trebaju učiti o tome kako se jedan smiješni operetski diktatorčić petljao čak i u takve stvari kao što je ime nekog nogometnog kluba. Štoviše, mislim da je ta epizoda bila jako važna, i da je za rekonstrukciju njegova malog, bolesnog licitarsko-švercerskog režima upravo amblematska.

Druga stvar mene u cijeloj priči nervira: to što je ta epizoda danas tek providan alibi naše historiografije, koja želi biti objektivna izvlačeći tamne mrlje iz naše bliske prošlosti. Da, slavna je to i veličanstvena prošlost, stvorili smo državu i pobijedili u nepravednom i nametnutom ratu, ali bilo je i ružnih stvari, i nije da se mi bojimo i sustežemo otvoreno progovoriti o njima: eto, na primjer, Tuđman je Dinamu promijenio ime u Croatia. O da, draga djeco, i toga je bilo u to vrijeme.

Tipično je to za kukavičku hrvatsku historiografiju, koja se ne bi htjela nikome zamjeriti, pa čak i tom naizgled neugodnom epizodom podilazi većini. Povijest, uostalom, pišu pobjednici, a Bad Blue Boysi su u tom ratu pobijedili, oni su Good Blue Guys, oni su sa Dinamovim šalovima jurišali na tenkove i branili svoju domovinu, i zgodno je da mališani u osmom razredu uče kako je Otac Nacije u huda vremena morao čvrstom rukom voditi državu, promijenio je, eto, i ime Dinamu, ali valja, draga djeco, znati i to da je on to uradio u dobroj vjeri, za dobro jedine nam i vječne Hrvatske.

Ista je to logika kojom smo djecu učili da je Ante Pavelić negativac zato što je izdao hrvatski narod na Bleiburgu, ili zato što je bio antidemokrat i što je raspustio Sabor. Da, bilo je i ružnih stvari u toj NDH: ustaše su, na primjer, zabranili glasilo HSS-a Hrvatski dnevnik, a i prilično neblagonaklono su gledali na jazz.

Djeca će tako učiti kako je Tuđman bio kontroverzna povijesna figura jer je promijenio ime jednog nogometnog kluba, ali nikad neće učiti kako je isti taj slavni vojskovođa i osebujni državnik sanjao etnički čistu Hrvatsku, kako je dijelio Bosnu, štitio najgore pljačkaško smeće i odlikovao najgnjusnije zlikovce i ubojice. To nije suština Tuđmanove vladavine? Naravno da nije. On je utemeljio hrvatsku državu i promijenio ime zagrebačkog nogometnog prvoligaša.

"Zločin" promjene svetog imena Dinamo neće ugroziti statiku te veličanstvene istine, on je historijski prihvatljiv: novo ime, uostalom, bilo je Croatia, i - kako se u samom udžbeniku tvrdi - radi se tek o nespretnoj odluci kojom je Tuđman izgubio podršku mladih. Na taj način je historiografija objektivna, a ovce na broju.

Tako je siroti Tuđman preko noći postao autokrat. To se zove povijesna distanca: laički kazano, to je vrijeme potrebno da zadana stvar dođe iz dupeta u glavu. Kad je, međutim, glava u dupetu, ta distanca - kako vidimo - zna biti mnogo kraća.

[Orhanowski]

Kolumna Borisa Dežulovića

Rado ide hrvat u violončeliste

4. april 2007.



Ukidanje obaveznog vojnog roka sad je već sasvim izvjesna stvar, novi će Zakon o obrani biti i formalno izglasan u Saboru, pa će hrvatski srednjoškolci prestati - kao u vrijeme janjičara i otomanskih zavojevača - bjesomučno upisivati fakultete i rezati prste na rukama. Ili barem opsjedati doktore za potvrdu da imaju četiri prsta. Nema za koga ti golobradi mali huligani nisu proteklih stoljeća ratovali - od Vatikana i Mletaka do Austrije i Jugoslavije - a sad, kad konačno imamo svoju državu, oni bi odjednom na fakultet!


Ne znam za vas, ali ja nisam siguran da je to dobro rješenje. Čak i kad bi to bio strateški povratak dobroj, staroj mitološkoj podjeli na "hrvatsku kulturu i srpsko junaštvo". Ali nije mi poznato da se radi na osmišljavanju ročnog sustava za novačenje u tisućljetnu uljudbu. Ono što je danas ministar obrane, tad bi trebao biti ministar kulture. Svaka bi općina - kako sam ja to zamislio - imala ured za kulturu, i klinci bi pred kraj srednje škole dobivali uredne pozive za odsluživanje uljudbenog roka.

"Si dobil pozif?" "Aha. Uljudbena pošta 1087 Vatroslav Lisinski." "Kaj je to, koji je to rod?" "Filharmonija. A ti?" "Japica imaju vezu, pak sem dobil UP 4082 Hlebine." Tako bi to bilo, da se mene pita. I onda surova obuka. Ustajanje uz Odu radosti, hrvatski vojnički hors d'oeuvres, niskokalorična voćna salata ili kiflice s mozzarellom, pa čišćenje instrumenata, rastavljanje i sastavljanje klarineta, i marš na solfeggio. "UP 7009, Brijuni? Mornarica, a?" "Aha. Teatar Ulysses." Da, da, gospodo. Tko nije za kralja Leara, nije ni za ženu.

I bila bi ta vojska korisnija nego ova današnja, koja samo sjedi u kasarnama i čeka neku poplavu, potres ili lokacijsku dozvolu za pukovnikovu vikendicu. Prašinari koje dopadne UP 1072 Društvo hrvatskih književnika, u vojarni "Ivan Aralica Bukara" na Jelačića placu pisali bi bildungsromane o uskrsnuću Glembajevih u slobodnoj Hrvatskoj, a kad domovina u nevolji pozove, pisali bi nadahnute novinske komentare mudrih Vladinih poteza i govore za predizbornu kampanju. Pješadija iz HNK glumila bi oduševljene narodne mase kako kliču, a u slučaju veće prirodne katastrofe spremno bi uskočila i u sapunice, sitcome i televizijske reklame.

Ponositi hrvatski mladići pod sloganom "Rado ide Hrvat u violončeliste" opraštali bi se od svojih na kolodvorima, uplakane majke trpale bi im u torbe domaće ulje na platnu, a s radija bi ih ispraćao glas voditeljice: "Goranu Zlojiću sretan odlazak na odsluženje uljudbenog roka žele sestra Meredit, mama Biserka i ćaća Jozo uz Šostakovičev klavirski trio u C-molu, op. 67". Zbunjene, golobrade guštere u koncertnim dvoranama i ateljeima dočekivali bi strogi intendanti, dirigenti i sveučilišni profesori: "Splićo, a? Ima jedan tvoj tamo, u konceptualcima."

Kakve bi to vojničke priče bile! "A u vojsci sam stekao druga do groba, i kroničnu upalu zgloba, suvenir na baletne dane." Desetljećima poslije pričali bi hrvatski muži o svojim vojničkim danima, večerima poezije negdje u velebitskim vrletima, i kiparskim kolonijama u karaulama na granici. I kako se ono bojnik Gabelica na premijeri Gavranove drame izderao na šaptača, jer pomaže ročnicima. I kako je jedan mangup iz Pule za vrijeme požarstva satniku Ušljebrki u baletanke ispraznio cijelo sljedovanje Rosinio kalafonijskog premaza za violinu.

Tako, međutim, biti neće. Umjesto da primaju pozive za simfonijski orkestar, Varaždinske barokne večeri ili Studio za suvremeni ples, maturanti će od sada biti prepušteni ulici i pravnim fakultetima. A domovina slovenskom zavojevaču.

Profesionalni vojnici, kažete? Nemojte me zajebavat! Zašto mislite da će oni - kad Hrvatska vojska postane profesionalna, tvrtka dakle kao i svaka druga državna firma - biti išta drugačiji od učitelja ili medicinskih sestara? I kad sa sjevera udare Janšine trupe, bit će kasno: otkrit ćemo, naravno, da je pola kopnene vojske na bolovanju, a druga u štrajku zbog neisplaćenih dječjih doplataka. Iz inženjerijskih baza nestajat će žice i armature, terene za vikendice pripremat će jurišni tenkovi, koje će voziti nećaci što ih je zaposlio bojnik Gabelica, a mornarica će torpedima loviti ribu i prodavati je na crno restoranima. Pa pilot se niti u izviđački let neće dignuti bez koverte sa dva-tri soma eura!

I što kad prva generacija profesionalne vojske dođe pred penziju, pitam ja vas? Negdje najkasnije do 2035., domovinu će nam braniti armija šezdesetogodišnjaka naoružana izoflavonskim kapsulama za prostatu, vrećicama ginko čaja protiv senilnosti i maskirnim pelenama za inkontinenciju. Njima, vjerujte, neće padati na pamet ratovati mjesec dana pred penziju.

A neće tada biti ni ročnika s violinama, ni pješadije Dramskog programa HTV-a, ni zbora rezervnih židovskih robova da zagrmi Verdijev "Va pensiero, sull'ali dorate!", tako da se agresoru sledi krv u žilama.

Tisućljetna hrvatska uljudba? Dobro vam je i trajala.

[Orhanowski]

Kolumna Borisa Dežulovića

Proroci, hipiji i budale

22. april 2007. | Boris Dežulović



U jednom od najglasovitijih prizora prošlog stoljeća, američki je multimilijunaš Benjamin Guggenheim na tonućem Titanicu najprije u čamac za spašavanje smjestio ljubavnicu i njenu sluškinju, nakon čega se vratio u kabinu i odjenuo svoje najskuplje večernje odijelo. Usred užasne gužve, dok je orkestar Wallacea Hartleya svirao ragtime, Guggenheim je - prema sjećanjima svjedoka - zapalio cigaru i dostojanstveno otpuhnuo dim: "Spreman sam otići kao džentlmen."


Benjamin Guggenheim, kao i svih osam članova Hartleyeva orkestra, potonuli su s Titanicom. Zajedno s njima, nestala je i civilizacija u kojoj je bilo moguće da jedan bogataš, koji je naslijedio dovoljno novca da kupi cijeli Titanic zajedno s brodogradilištem, na burzi smrti zamijeni svoj život s nekom nesretnicom iz potpalublja. Nisam tako naivan da idealiziram povijest i njene junake, ali odavde, iz trećeg tisućljeća, ta mi njena autentična epizoda izgleda kao istinita srednjovjekovna viteška legenda. Dovoljno vam je na palubi tonućeg trajekta s nedovoljno čamaca za spašavanje zamisliti Keruma, Pašalića, Rojsa ili nekog drugog od junaka naše tranzicijske pljačke, pa da shvatite o čemu govorim.

Titanic je potonuo 15. travnja 1912., i istog dana, pored podsjećanja iz rubrike «Dogodilo se na današnji dan», vidio sam oglas za zagrebačko gostovanje Jacka Welcha, bivšeg predsjednika General Electrica, čije je nadahnuto predavanje na temu liderstva u suvremenom biznisu najavljeno kao dolazak menadžerskog pape.

Kliknuo sam na sajtu Jutarnjeg na tu najavu, te pored online prijave za Svetu Misu i budalastih coelhizama Velikog Gurua - poput one duboke "Naučio sam da greške mogu biti dobar učitelj za uspjeh" - naišao i na kviz znanja: "Jack ima nekoliko pitanja za vas. Odgovorite i saznajte kako biste prošli u okršaju s legendarnim svjetskim menagerom!"

Naravno da sam odmah spremno sjeo sučelice Učitelju, i otvorio kviz čija su se pitanja doimala kao "Modra lasta za menadžere". Evo primjera: "Pruža vam se prilika za unapređenje; međutim, za njega ćete se morati izboriti protiv starije kolegice preko koje ste i došli u tvrtku. Vi ćete: a) odustati od unapređenja, jer ona je puno učinila za vas, ovo joj je zadnja prilika za napredak, a vi ste mlađi i bit će još šansi za vas, b) nema popusta za nikoga; punim gasom po unapređenje, vrijeme ju je ionako pregazilo, i c) krenuti u borbu, ali s pola snage, pokazati ljudima oko sebe da želite napredak, ali i da niste beskrupulozni: tako ćete lakše s njima manipulirati kad im postanete šef."

Iskreno, mislio sam da je riječ o trik-pitanjima, jer odgovor pod b) je providan i prvoloptaški, pa sam bojažljivo zaokruživao odgovore pod a), po duši i osebujnom poduzetničkom iskustvu, ali i sa tihom strepnjom da ću na kraju ispasti idealan materijal za Novog Menadžera, mudrog i pravednog, ali osjećajnog Dragog Vođu. Zebnja je, naravno, bila sasvim neutemeljena: od mogućih 20 u kvizu sam dobio puna četiri boda i dijagnozu "Izgubljen", uz obrazloženje: "Kako ste vi uopće dospjeli na odgovornu funkciju? Hipi pokret je već odavno prošao, parola je 'make money', a ne 'make love'. Obavezno posjetiti predavanje, samo pazite da Jack ne sazna kako ste mekani jer će vas potjerati kući."

Priznajem, prilično sam popizdio i najozbiljnije naumio poslušati savjet, pa pred svim onim mutantima rotarijanske mladeži postaviti Velikom Guruu sljedeće pitanje: "Pruža vam se prilika za spas s tonućeg broda; međutim, za posljednje mjesto u čamcu morat ćete se izboriti protiv ljubavnice s kojom ste i otišli na krstarenje, te njene sluškinje. Vi ćete: a) odustati od čamca, jer ona je puno učinila za vas, pa ćete je smjestiti u čamac, presvući se u večernje odijelo i dostojanstveno potonuti s brodom, b) nema popusta za nikoga; punim gasom preko žena i djece u čamac, i c) sluškinju gurnuti u more, a ljubavnicu ubiti pištoljem da se ne muči, i pokazati svima u čamcu da niste posve beskrupulozni."

Jack Welch bi me, slutim, sažaljivo pogledao i rekao "oho, imamo i hipija ovdje", a dvoranom bi se zaorio složan hijenski smijeh. "Vidite, mladi gospodine, ja sam naučio da greške mogu biti dobar učitelj za uspjeh" - nastavio bi Guru, dok bi mladi menadžeri ridajući padali na koljena - "a ja sam iz greške gospodina Guggenheima mnogo naučio."

To je, eto, prorok dvadeset prvog vijeka, guru mladih menadžera u štakorsko sivim odijelima, odgajanih da se čovjek mjeri nulama i da na tom putu nema živih zarobljenika. Veliki Učitelj će toj obezljuđenoj direktorskoj mladunčadi objasniti kako je glupo gaziti i ubijati u ime nacije i vjere, i da nam je ušteđenu mržnju i neljudskost - prirodni resurs vrjedniji od mora, otoka, sunca i drugih budalaština - mnogo pametnije investirati u profit.

Što se mene tiče, ja ću obući stare, izlizane zvoncare, otpuhnuti dim trave i gledati kako Titanic tone. Umjesto Wallace Hartleya, svirat će orkestar Lowella Georgea. "Don't bogart that joint", kaže himna Izgubljenih, gubitnika koje su učili dijeliti, a ne množiti.

Sve je u redu, pustite mladog gospodina u čamac. Ja sam spreman otići kao hipi.

[Orhanowski]

Kolumna Borisa Dežulovića

Teorija i praksa relativističkog vaterpolizma

9. april 2007.



Iako će mnogi reći da je srebrna medalja na svjetskom vaterpolskom prvenstvu u Melbourneu neuspjeh, valja biti realan: već i samo finale, drugo dakle mjesto među dvjesto država svijeta, za državicu poput naše golem je uspjeh. Ispred nas je samo Mađarska, svjetska vaterpolska velesila, pa je drugo mjesto Hrvatske zapravo uspjeh ravan tituli svjetskih prvaka.


Mislite da se zajebavam? Ne, ja samo svijet tumačim po Einstunu Tonču Vrdoljaku, ocu hrvatskog olimpizma i utemeljitelju takozvane relativističke filozofske škole, po kojemu je Mađarska praktički prva, a drugo mjesto Hrvatske ravno prvom. Neka vas ne zbunjuje što po rezultatu finalne utakmice između Hrvatske i Mađarske ispada da je zapravo Hrvatska svjetski prvak. Podsjetit ću vas kako je prije točno deset godina, nakon što je u finalnoj utakmici Mediteranskih igara u Bariju Jugoslavija pobijedila Hrvatsku 8:7, legendarni Vrdoljak objasnio kako je Hrvatska praktički prvak, jer praktički nije ni izgubila finale: "Hrvatska je s Jugoslavijom praktički odigrala 7:7, jer smo onaj osmi gol mogli postići i mi, kao i oni".

Očekivao sam stoga da će se nakon nedjeljnog finala Antun Vrdoljak ponovo javiti, makar da smiri opću euforiju. Jebiga, nakon praktičkih 8:8, onaj deveti gol mogli su dati i Mađari, kao i mi. Prema Vrdoljaku, dakle, Mađari praktički nisu izgubili finale, što znači da su praktički prvaci svijeta, samo što to još nitko ne zna.

Nas pak može utješiti činjenica da su hrvatski waterlooisti, pardon vaterpolisti, po Vrdoljaku praktički drugi na svijetu, dakle viceprvaci, što u konačnici znači - ako sam dobro razumio njegovu pomalo kompliciranu teoriju - da je to praktički ravno tituli prvaka, pošto smo onaj deveti gol mogli dati i mi, kao i Mađari. Tim više što smo mi zaista i zabili taj deveti gol. Vidite kako filozofija može vaterpolo učiniti čarobnim sportom?

Iz nekog razloga, međutim, Vrdoljak se ovaj put nije javio. Možda i zato što Hrvatska po njemu nije ni prva, ni druga, nego - treća. Svojedobno, naime, pred Olimpijske igre u Atlanti 1996. godine, isti je velikan waterlooističkog vaterpolizma izjavio da bi "više volio da dobijemo Jugoslaviju u borbi za sedmo mjesto, nego da igramo finale". Šteta je što se taj olimpijski duh, po kojemu nije važno pobijediti, nego sudjelovati u pobjedi nad Jugoslavijom, u modernom sportu gotovo sasvim izgubio. U neka stara, romantična vremena, dok se Vrdoljaka još nešto pitalo, Hrvatska bi već nakon pobjede nad Srbijom u polufinalu ovog prvenstva spakirala stvari i vratila se kući, jer finale više ne bi bilo važno. Ratku Rudiću i njegovim izabranicima, međutim, važnija je bila pobjeda u finalu nego pobjeda nad Srbijom.

Iz nekog razloga, međutim, Vrdoljak se nije javio niti kad su Rudićevi izbranici u polufinalu pobijedili Srbiju. Možda i zato što momčad koju vodi Ratko Rudić po njemu nije ni prva, ni druga, ni treća, niti je uopće - Hrvatska. Svojedobno, naime, upravo na olimpijskom turniru u Atlanti, Hrvatska je u prvom međusobnom susretu pobijedila Jugoslaviju 8:6, ali tada odjednom nije važilo ni relativističko načelo po kojemu su sedmi i osmi gol mogli dati i oni kao i mi, niti coubertinovsko načelo po kojemu je važnije pobijediti Jugoslaviju i biti sedmi nego pobijediti ostatak svijeta i biti prvi. Čudesnom igrom slučaja, Hrvatska je tada igrala i sa reprezentacijom Italije, koju je vodio upravo - kako je svijet mali, lopta okrugla, a utakmica traje do posljednjeg sučeva zvižduka - Ratko Rudić!

Povijesnog pamćenja radi, valja podsjetiti što je predsjednik Hrvatskog olimpijskog odbora tada javno poručio Ratku Rudiću: "Rudiću, tamo dolje kod nas su tvoja groblja, tamo su tvoji mrtvi i ono što moraš vratiti! Hoćeš li imati obraza, hoćeš se moći vratiti?"

Ratko Rudić, izdajnik svojih mrtvih predaka i njihovih grobova, ne samo da je imao obraza vratiti se, ne samo da je nakon svega imao obraza obući trenerku sa šahovnicom i postati izbornik hrvatske reprezentacije, ne samo da je s njom pobijedio Srbiju u prvom njenom nastupu pod tim zloglasnim imenom, nego je imao obraza s Hrvatskom postati i svjetskim prvakom. Ako mene pitate, bezobraznijega čovjeka u životu vidio nisam, i da sam ja predsjednik Hrvatskog olimpijskog odbora, oduzeo bih Hrvatskoj zlatnu medalju i proglasio je sedmoplasiranom reprezentacijom.

Ovako, Hrvatska je jedina zemlja u kojoj nacionalistički idioti i šoveni titulu prvaka svijeta doživljavaju kao kaznu. A njena vaterpolska reprezentacija jedina hrvatska nacionalna selekcija za koju su navijali i tipovi poput mene, provjereni mrzitelji svega hrvatskog.

Ostaje joj tek vaterpolo, neobična igra koja - nakon što je Janica Kostelić dokazala da se strmoglavim kotrljanjem nizbrdo može stići do vrha - sada pokazuje da se i s vodom do grla može biti najbolji na svijetu.

[Orhanowski]

Kolumna Borisa Dežulovića

Ku-kukuruz-klan ili protokoli avionskih mudraca

25. mart 2007. | Boris Dežulović


"Pokrivajući čak pola milijuna hektara, od svih poljoprivrednih kultura u Hrvatskoj najrasprostranjeniji je - kukuruz", čuje se glas naratora Martina Sheena dok kamera u nepreglednom zelenom moru zumira debeljuškastog farmera koji govori nagnut nad nježnu mladicu: "Vidite kako se izdužuju internodiji stabljike, a konus rasta dolazi na površinu tla. U ovoj fazi nodijalno pravo korijenje čini glavni dio korjenovog sistema i već je dobro razvijeno. Korijenje je jako važno, jer stabljika zna visoko narasti. Uz malo đubriva, ovoliki će kukuruz narasti do žetve."


Tako bi nekako počinjao film "Korijeni za budućnost", jednosatni dokumentarac o Anti Đapiću, da sam ga ja radio. Ali film je radio Jakov Sedlar, pa nekako slutim da publika na premijeri u Angelica Theateru u New Yorku nije vidjela ni svojedobnu Pavelićevu sliku u Đapićevu uredu, ni dirljivu scenu s otvaranja Francetićevog spomenika u Slunju, ni onu kultnu scenu u kojoj Đapić, poput ministra poljoprivrede u NDH Živana Kuveždića, visoko uzdignute desnice pokazuje "koliki će kukuruzi u Slavoniji rasti kad HSP dođe na vlast".

Šteta, jer tajming je bio savršen. Istoga dana na izvanrednim lokalnim izborima u Slavonskom Brodu Đapićev je Ku-Kuruz-Klan odnio premoćnu pobjedu, a za koji tjedan počinje sjetva kukuruza: na vašem mjestu ja bih odmah sve rasprodao, pa kupio komad Brodsko-posavske županije i nekoliko šlepera Bc-ovog sjemena hibridnog kukuruza.

Pa ipak, kako sad stvari stoje, prije će osječki gradonačelnik obnoviti gornjogradsku sinagogu, i prije će postati počasni predsjednik Židovskog športskog društva Makabi, nego što taj kukuruz sazrije za žetvu. Ne zato što kukuruz neće narasti, nego zato što je Anto Đapstein odlučio, izgleda, postati pravednik među narodima.

Svega smo se mi do povraćanja gadljivog nagledali, ali Đapićeva izraelska epizoda, protokol avionskog mudraca na liniji Zagreb-New York via Jeruzalem, jedna je od najdegutantnijih. Nakon što se ušuljao u Izrael kao turist-samoljubojica, pa gotovo provalio u Yad Vashem, gurajući se pred knjigom utisaka, nako što je mjesecima po Svetoj zemlji tražio neki grad, gradić, selo, zaselak, kibuc, lift, bilo što da se pobratimi s Osijekom, Đapstein se dosjetio novom genijalnom potezu: unajmio je izraelsku producentsku kuću Filmind, specijaliziranu za političku propagandu, da snimi film o njemu.

Filmind je već radio propagandne filmove za brojne izraelske i europske političare, uključujući i Velju Ilića, nesuđenog predsjednika Srbije, danas ministra za kapitalne investicije, organizatora Cecinih koncerata i najvećeg kabadahiju Koštuničine vlade. Što je koincidencija zgodna poput one kad se istodobno s Đapićem Izraelom šuljao Pero Bukejlović, premijer Republike Srpske.

Za vjerovati je da je naš Velja Đapić najprije pokušao doći do Spielberga, ali ovaj, koliko je poznato, ne planira novi nastavak "Ralja". Ne bi bio loš ni "Jurski park", ali pretpostavljam da su Lucasovi kompjuterski animatori, kad su vidjeli skice glavnog junaka, procijenili da je to prevelik izazov.

Preostali su tako producenti iz Filminda, koje rabin Đapitz sad po Hrvatskoj vodi kao mečke. Stvar je, kažem, odvratna do povraćanja, jer jedino što je Đapiću bilo važno jest plakat za film, na kojemu će uz njegovo blago filosemitsko lice stajati ona nerazumljiva hebrejska slova.

U tom naručenom dokumentarcu nećete tako čuti Đapića kako govori da je "jedina krivnja ustaškog pokreta u tome što nije uspio", nećete čuti da je "i jedan Srbin u Saboru previše", da "nije isto počinio zločin Srbin ili Hrvat", ili da "je vijest o smanjenju broja Srba jedna od boljih u posljednje vrijeme". Neće u tom filmu, slutim, biti mjesta za izjavu da je suđenje jasenovačkom krvniku Dinku Šakiću bio "politički proces", i da "hrvatskim Židovima imovina za NDH nije bila oduzimana, nego davana drugima na upravljanje". Neće stati mnogo takvih i sličnih izjava velikog antifašiste i osvjedočenog prijatelja židovskog naroda Ante Đapića.

Na pitanje zašto se žrtvama nacizma poklonio u Jeruzalemu, kad mu je Jasenovac mnogo bliži, Anto Đapić je posredno odgovorio u beogradskim Večernjim novostima, rekavši kako će u Jasenovac otići kad Srbija raskrsti s jasenovačkim mitom, jer bi u protivnom "bio dijelom propagandističke mašinerije i specijalnog rata protiv Hrvatske i Hrvata". "Naše hrvatsko čovjekoljublje obvezuje nas izraziti žaljenje za nevine žrtve", rekao je tada Đapić, "ali smo istodobno obvezni voditi računa i o tome, da se ta naša iskrena gesta ne zlorabi u propagandističke svrhe suprotne nacionalnim interesima. A upravo bismo takve učinke polučili da je u Jasenovac otišao Anto Đapić."

Propagandna mašinerija, kako vidimo, dobra je kad radi za Hrvatsku i njene nacionalne interese. A Đapić u njoj Židove koristi kao nove maskote svoje stranke, ondje gdje se do nedavno kočio opaki sivi vuk: njemu su Židovi potrebni i korisni otprilike koliko i Dinku Šakiću u jasenovačkom pogonu za preradu kože. Vuk, naime, kožu mijenja.

Ako vam se to doima neslanom shalom, čekajte da vidite ovogodišnju izbornu listu HSP-a. Kako čujem, nositelj liste bit će Oskar Schindler.

[Orhanowski]

Kolumna Borisa Dežulovića

Genocid

12. mart 2007. | Boris Dežulović



Ne razumijem se u pravo, ali znam nešto o matematici, bio sam kao klinac dosta nadaren matematičar. A matematika je iznad zemaljskog prava, jer matematički zakoni jednako vrijede na Međunarodnom sudu u Haagu, Općinskom sudu u Gospiću, na dnu Pacifika ili u sazviježđu Vega. I ne postoji pravni lijek koji će vam pomoći kad prekršite matematički zakon: ako je a-x=a-y, onda su "x" i "y" jednaki, i nema tu ni žalbe ni Vrhovnog suda.


I može Ipsilonov odvjetnik pronaći Iksu troje vanbračne djece, tajni račun u Grazu i tjeralicu zbog silovanja, mogu u obranu Ipsilona svjedočiti i Dalaj Lama i papa Benedikt XVI i Pierluigi Collina, može advokat dokazati da "y" ni žrtvu ni optuženog uopće ne poznaje i da su njemu "a" i "x" nepoznanice, svejedno su po matematičkom zakonu Iks i Ipsilon podjednako pokrali nepoznanicu "a", i zapravo su isti podmukli kurvini sinovi. Jednostavno, pred zakonom su "x" i "y" jednaki, bez obzira na spol, nacionalnost, rasu ili vjeroispovijest.

Pokušat ću vam to matematičko pravo približiti nekim primjerom iz svakodnevnog života. Evo, na primjer, odluka Međunarodnog suda pravde u Haagu u slučaju tužbe BiH protiv Republike Srbije, kojom je međunarodna pravda presudila kako u Bosni nije bilo genocida. Zapravo, bilo ga je, ali samo u jednoj općini, više dakle kao problem lokalne politike, u domeni komunalnog poduzeća "Vodovod i genocid".

Iz tog razloga, pravnom logikom Haaga, za taj mali, mjesni problem ne može biti odgovorna država, a naročito ne susjedna. Iako, nije ni ona bez krivice: strogi, ali pravedan sud presudio je da Srbija, doduše, nije organizirala genocid, ali je odgovorna jer ga je mogla spriječiti, svojim nesumnjivim utjecajem na bosanske Srbe. Zapravo, da ne mistificiramo, na onih par obijesnih geliptera iz bratunačkog "Vodovoda" što su noć prije zapili u kafani, pa se posvađali hoće li polagati cijevi za novi vodovod ili u iskopane kanale pobacati sve srebreničke muškarce. Zaboga, ni u Bajinoj Bašti nisu znali ništa o tome, a kamoli u Beogradu.

Na ovom mjestu ponovit ćemo postupak s početka teksta i u jednadžbu uvesti ipsilon. Da vidimo tko bi mogao biti ipsilon. Treba nam neka jaka država, ili međunarodna organizacija, još bolje, neki vojno-politički ili ekonomski savez, sila neka dovoljno jaka da ima utjecaj na cijele države, a kamoli komunalna poduzeća. Neke sjedinjene države, američke ili europske, ujedinjeni narodi, tako nešto. Takvi savezi, kako znamo, imaju priličan utjecaj u društvu. Dovoljno je da neki nadrkani ćato u Bruxellesu krivo stavi jedan zarez, pa da sutradan propadne poljoprivreda u regiji, padnu dvije-tri vlade, a bez posla ostane dvjesto tisuća ljudi.

Ti državni savezi imaju takav utjecaj da mogu svrgavati diktature, obarati nacionalne valute i bombardirati cijele države. Pa ako je isti takav jedan savez svojedobno bez kompjutera i satelita zaustavio golemu njemačku holokaust korporaciju, kako ne bi mogao jedan mali, lokalni, komunalni holokaustić? Isti je taj savez, najzad, u Srebrenici imao svoje vojnike i tenkove.

Ponovimo: ako je, dakle, pokolj u Srebrenici bio lokalni pokolj, dakle van nadležnosti države Srbije, ako ga Srbija dakle nije mogla organizirati, već je odgovorna samo utoliko što ga je mogla spriječiti, postoji li ijedan matematički zakon koji nas sprječava da u toj jednadžbi "x" zamijenimo s "y"? SAD, NATO, EU, UN, ono što u matematičkoj teoriji skupova nazivamo "međunarodnom zajednicom", sasvim sigurno nisu organizirali genocid u Srebrenici, ali su ga jednako sigurno svojim golemim ekonomskim, političkim i vojnim utjecajem mogli spriječiti. Štoviše, oni su to deklarativno i pokušali. Rezultat je, međutim, i sa njima bio isti: osam tisuća ubijenih srebreničkih muškaraca.

Vidite kako je matematika čudesna? Ispada da su Amerika, Europa, Ujedinjeni narodi i njihov slavni sud jednako odgovorni za genocid u Srebrenici, jednaki dakle kao Miloševićeva Srbija. Da provjerimo: a-x=a-y, dakle x=y. Fakat, ispada tako. I da nisu i biološki zakoni iznad ljudskih, bilo bi zanimljivo pratiti kako se dalje odvija ta matematička operacija - kako se suđenjem Miloševiću dokazuje i golema povijesna odgovornost zločinačkog suda koji mu sudi.

Mene, međutim - obzirom da se ne bavim pravom, nego rekreativnom matematikom - ništa ne sprječava da donesem pravomoćno rješenje jednadžbe po kojemu je Slobodan Milošević, hitler moje generacije, kriv i za Srebrenicu i sve ostale srebrenice, i da je po svakoj točki njegove optužnice jednako pravomoćno kriv i časni sud koji mu sudi, i organizacija koja te suce plaća, i politika koja plaća tu organizaciju. Objection is, naravno, overruled.

Ja ih, doduše, ne mogu poslati u sheveningenski zatvor, ali ih svu trojicu mogu poslati u neku drugu kazneno-popravnu instituciju.

Pače, u tri.

[Orhanowski]

Jezik
17. februar 2007. | Boris Dežulović
Ne znam za vas, ali ja sam bogami mislio da se Ante zajebava. Tomić. Ono kad je prije desetak dana u nedjeljnom Jutarnjem napisao da će nakon donošenja Zakona o jeziku policija krenuti u bespoštedan obračun sa prekršiteljima, "široku akciju kodnog imena 'Kašić-Miošić'”. Već je Ante vidio naslove u novinama: “Središće: Pogrešnom deklinacijom akuzativa zlostavljao nevjenčanu suprugu”, ili “Gospić: Napio se pa brkao glagolska vremena”.


Nije, međutim, prošlo ni sedam dana, a u istom tom Jutarnjem listu osvanuo je preko cijele stranice naslov: "Zagreb: Bili protiv 'grješke' i 'ne ću' i ostali bez kune za znanstvene radove!"

I sva je sreća da ono što Tomić piše u Hrvatskoj i službeno nije umjetnost, jer bi stari cinik Oscar Wilde opet bio u pravu, tvrdeći kako život oponaša umjetnost.

Što se dogodilo? Dvojica starijih muškaraca, koji su u šturom policijskom izvješću navedeni samo kao J. S. (73) iz Milaša kraj Donjeg Jelenja, po zanimanju profesor emmeritus, i I. P. (60) iz Kotor Varoša, Bosna i Hercegovina, po zanimanju prof. dr., obojica državljani Republike Hrvatske, uhvaćeni su u krivoslovu kada su od Ministarstva znanosti zatražili novčanu potporu za svoje znanstvene radove "Hrvatski pravopisni-pravogovorni priručnik", odnosno "Priručnik za učenje hrvatskog jezika kao stranog", namijenjen strancima koji uče naš jezik.

Kako doznajemo, radi se o Josipu Siliću Zemuncu i Ivi Pranjkoviću zvanom Prenki, dugogodišnjim predavačima na Katedri hrvatskog jezika Filozofskog fakulteta u Zagrebu. U njihovoj jazbini na Sveučilištu, koja je prema očevicima izgledala kao Stjepan-Babina pećina, pronađena je veća količina slova "j" i "t", što su godinama zagonetno nestajali pri "pogrješkama" u "zadatcima" na Odsjeku za kroatistiku.

Beskrupulozni dvojac, otprije poznat organima gonjenja po svom protivljenju odvojenoj transkripciji glagolskog oblika "ne ću" - a Josip Silić Zemunac i po "Pravopisnom priručniku hrvatskog ili srpskog jezika" iz 1986., kojega je sastavio s pokojnim bossom Vladimirom Anićem zvanim Nećo - glatko je odbijen na natječaju Ministarstva kulture i znanosti kad su recenzenti u njihovim projektima otkrili goleme količine pravopisnih pogrješaka, spremnih za dilanje, predavanje i prepredaju lakovjernim studentima Filozofskog fakulteta. Ukratko, u svojoj odbijenici organi gonjenja su poručili Prenkiju i Zemuncu da se gone u za to predviđene organe. Zajedno sa svojim projektima.

I samo valjda zahvaljujući činjenici da Zakon o jeziku još nije donesen, zloglasni jezikoslovci nisu završili u Lijepoglavi, da tamo šest mjeseci strjelicama označavaju pogrješke u svojim zadatcima, zajedno s okorjelim kriminalcima s Trećeg programa Hrvatskog radija, a sve po članku 16. Zakona o hrvatskome jeziku, koji glasi: "Zatvorom do šest mjeseci kaznit će se odgovorna osoba u krugovalnoj ili dalekovidničkoj postaji u kojoj se rabi nehrvatski međunarodno-hrvatski jezik."

Ante Tomić? Ne, već Vice Vukojević, u svom prijedlogu Zakona o jeziku iz 1995. godine. Da, isti onaj slavni Vice Vukojević, koji je u to doba predlagao i osnivanje Državnog ureda za hrvatski jezik - jezične policije koja je između ostalog imala zadaću i, citiram, "nadgledati jezik u tisku" i "jezično savjetovati pisce književnih djela".

Ako je vama smiješno, meni nije. Tip koji bi u normalnoj Hrvatskoj bio junak "Globalnog sijela", zaboravljeni redikul iz Sabora koji u istoj onoj maskirnoj uniformi danas sakuplja po kontejnerima prazne boce mineralne vode i na pazaru prodaje mineralni kupus, još uvijek je sudac Ustavnog suda, one dakle instance koja će sutra razmatrati ustavnost Zakona o jeziku.

A njegova ideja, za koju smo mislili da pripada mračnom dvadesetom vijeku, kako vidimo - još živi. Dva veka Vukojevića.

Uistinu, fascinantna je upornost naših jeziko-palucajaca da zauzdaju hrvatski jezik. Njihov je trud urodio posve jedinstvenim fenomenom u svjetskim razmjerima: ne postoji danas narod koji se svoga jezika boji kao Hrvati, prestravljeni i kad rješavaju križaljku - jedini na svijetu koji, čak i kad znaju da su pogriješili, ne znaju jesu li napravili grešku ili grješku.

Hrvati ne znaju svoj jezik, i nije mi poznato da je ijedan projekt koji se ikad našao na stolu ministra Primorca imao više smisla, je li ijedan Hrvatima bio potrebniji od onoga kojega je Primorčevo ministarstvo glatko odbilo Ivi Pranjkoviću Prenkiju - "Izrada priručnika za učenje hrvatskog jezika kao stranog".

I dok jezikoslovci u maskirnim uniformama ne donesu Zakon o jeziku, prije nego me počnu "jezično savjetovati" kako "ne će pogrješke u zadatcima" - dok traje dakle jezikoslovostaj - ja, evo, koristim priliku da im na svom nestandardnom hrvatskom poručim - ebiese.

Pa neka rastavljaju i ubacuju "j" i "t" kako god hoće.

[Orhanowski]

Strategija ležećeg policajca

26. februar 2007. | Boris Dežulović


U petak ujutro, dan nakon krvavog obračuna pred kafićem Pamela, u parku na Šetalištu Bačvice sreo sam susjeda iz ulice, s kojim u našem malom kvartovskom dućanu komentiram političke i sportske novitade. Strašno je to što se dogodilo - rekao mi je - i strašno je što su dva golobrada klinca mrtva i prije nego što su stigla odrasti, ali najstrašnije od svega je što ja sad mogu reći da se to moralo dogoditi kako bi opet bilo mira u kvartu.


I zaista: dva klinca, koja još nisu stigla produžiti prvu osobnu kartu, ubio je treći, koji će se prvi put obrijati na dugogodišnjoj robiji u zatvoru - a moj kvart je odahnuo. Bakice pred portunima se krste i šapuću, penzioneri na klupama komentiraju propast zapadne civilizacije, na šankovima Bačvica prepričavaju se pouzdane informacije, a žene u dućanu obaziru se preko ramena i kažu: božeprosti, ali bogu hvala - sad će biti mira u Beogradu na Moru.

Samo policija ne kaže ništa. Oni se ionako pojavljuju tek s mrtvozornicima, oblijepe parkiralište bijelim trakama s natpisom "Policija", lijepe one brojeve na automobile i izrešetane zidove, glume strogoću pred znatiželjnicima i užasno važno prtljaju u svoje toki-vokije. Policajac je ovdje rjeđa pojava od sredozemne medvjedice: ne znam kako je u vašem kvartu, ali mi na Bačvicama - uzgred, cijelih stotinu metara udaljeni od policijske stanice - ozbiljno razmišljamo o prijedlogu Ministarstvu za zaštitu okoliša da policajca stavi na popis izumirućih vrsta.

Zadnji put kad je ovdje divljala golobrada mafija, poslali su, doduše, cijeli odred interventne policije, ima evo već par godina da dva kordona policajaca dežuraju po kvartu, ali nema od njih neke vajde. Kad smo u Policijskoj upravi tražili objašnjenje, rekli su nam da su to ležeći policajci, posljednji krik tehnike, nešto kao prva generacija robocopa. Samo što je nenaoružan.

Priča o splitskom krvoproliću tipična je hrvatska kvartovska priča. Svi vi - kao i mi ovdje - znate te likove, nabrijanu balavurdiju u BMW-ima i Audijima, bahate klince koji briju glavu jer još nemaju bradu, svi znate tko među njima za koga dila drogu, gdje im je veleprodaja, gdje maloprodaja, gdje su trafike s marihuanom, a gdje pazar s heroinom, sve to znaju i vaša policija i vaše tužilaštvo, kao i naše, da se mi međusobno ne lažemo i ne zajebavamo, i svaki put kad netko od tih klinaca završi u novinama, otkrije se da ima dvadeset prekršajnih i desetak kaznenih prijava.

Sad gotovo i da nije važno je li policija upletena u ovaj ili druge slučajeve, poput nedavnog korčulanskog, gdje su otočkog bossa privodili robocopovi druge generacije, takozvani sjedeći policajci - oni što s osumnjičenima sjede u kafiću. Svaka bi se vlast morala zabrinuti nad činjenicom da je prva priča koja je Bačvicama krenula sutradan ujutro bila ona o policijskom zataškavanju, policijskim vezama i policijskim dilovima. Povjerenje u policiju niže je nego kad su Jelačić placom uredovali Karađorđevićevi žandari, i ljudi više vjeruju u izvještaje o krugovima u žitu nego u policijska izvješća.

Naš slavni ministar Ivica Kirin, zvijezda YouTubea, ima o tome svoju teoriju: "Sada si uzmite tko je o svemu čemu pričao i vidjeti ćete koliko masu tih stvari zapravo uopće nema veze s ničim." Na pitanje što onda zapravo radi policija on će iskreno, tupavošću mravojeda, odgovoriti: "Policija provodi operativna izvješća i o tome radi izvide i sumnje."

Radi se o takozvanoj "strategiji ležećeg policajca". Policija je, naime, obračun s organiziranim kriminalom prepustila - organiziranom kriminalu. Organizirani je kriminal ionako - kako sama riječ kaže - odlično organiziran. Koncept je toliko genijalan da je pravo čudo kako se to nitko prije nije sjetio: kvartovske mafije ubijat će se po gradskim parkiralištima, a policajci će ležati na sigurnom, da ne pokupe koji zalutali metak.

Strategija, kako vidimo, daje rezultate. Sve veći broj "ležećih mafijaša" na parkiralištima hrvatskih gradova ministar Kirin je na konferenciji za novinare, prije točno godinu dana - sjetit ćete se sigurno - prokomentirao onom slavnom rečenicom: "Mafijaška ubojstva produkt su dobrog rada policije."

Ako je dakle suditi po nedavnom masakru, policija je konačno i u našem kvartu počela raditi svoj posao. I kad pod prozorom, na parkiralištu pred zgradom, začujete psovke, galamu, udarce bejzbol palicama po automobilskim vjetrobranima i ljudskim kostima, pucnjeve iz pištolja, rafale iz kalašnjikova, krikove, hropce i škripu automobilskih kočnica, znajte da to hrvatska policija radi svoj posao. A ukoliko se slučajno zateknete na parkiralištu pred kafićem usred "dobrog rada policije", vi samo slijedite primjer ministra policije i zauzmite položaj ležećeg građanina.

Jer mir u kvartu, onaj koji će zavladati kad se međusobno pobijaju i posljednji kvartovski mafijaši, preživjet će - kako su to znali reći u Sarajevu - samo promašeni ljudi.

[Orhanowski]

Kolumna Borisa Dežulovića

Lopovi

21. januar 2007.


Vrijeme je novac - tom se marksističko-spencerističkom krilaticom rukovodio Ivo Sanader kad je preskočio zakonsku obavezu raspisivanja javnog natječaja za izgradnju dvorana za svjetsko rukometno prvenstvo 2009. godine. Rokovi su kratki, natječaj bi samo otegao početak radova, pa je premijer odlučio poslić od milijardu eura dodijeliti takozvanim javno-privatnim partnerstvima. Za nekoga kome je vrijeme novac, međutim, prilično je nepametno toliko novca ulupati u ogromne dvorane koje će, na koncu, biti upotrijebljene i ispunjene samo jednom. Ako već bira partnere s kojima će naš novac potrošiti na nešto što će biti upotrijebljeno i ispunjeno samo jednom, ova bi država prošla mnogo jeftinije da je Sanader kupio, recimo, kondom.


Vrijeme je, međutim, novac, i nitko to ne zna bolje od Ive Sanadera. Samo jedan ručni sat iz njegove kolekcije, platinasti A. Lange und Söhne, vrijedi nekih 28 tisuća eura. Što znači da Sanaderu sat vremena vrijedi više od tisuću eura, a svaka minuta dvadesetak eura. A kad nekome minuta vrijedi dvadesetak eura, shvatit ćete zašto mu se žuri.

Rekao bi jedan manje poznati mislilac s početka milenija: sapienti sat, a budali semafor u dvorani.

Vi, na primjer, vidite kako premijer s ručnim satom skupljim od Kerumova retrovizora dogovara projekt javno-privatnog partnerstva s poduzetnicima i odvjetnicima kojima je sat usluge skuplji od Sanaderovog, i odmah mislite da su to lopovska posla. Zašto se onda čudite kad država misli da ste lopovi upravo - vi?

Ovih dana saznali smo tako da je Zakonom o autorskim pravima famoznom ZAMP-u, agenciji za zaštitu muzičkih autorskih prava, prepušteno ubiranje danka na svaki prodani prazni CD, MP3-player ili računalo. Iznos harača zasad nije prevelik, pa iako je predviđeno da do 2009. sasvim lijepo naraste, to za ovu priču nije važno. Važno je da se harač ubire na temelju pretpostavke da će se na prazni CD pržiti ilegalno skinuta muzika, pa će ZAMP od svakog kupca jedan postotak proslijediti oštećenim autorima. Ukratko, država pretpostavlja da ste vi lopovi, a za ovu prigodu odriče vam čak i pravo da dokažete nevinost.

Ovaj je pravni presedan po svemu revolucionaran. Osim što vas je država proglasila lopovom čim ste kupili prazan CD, ona vas je odmah i kaznila. Što to, međutim, znači? Mogu li ja sad, kad sam s praznim CD-om platio i ZAMP-ov danak, nekažnjeno snimati tuđe autorske djelo? Je li tim porezom sada riješen problem ilegalne trgovine muzičkim i video-zapisima? Kako mislite, nije?! Po kojemu to ustavu čovjek može dva puta biti kažnjen za isti zločin?

Ovakav princip prevencije kriminala razvijen je iz one revolucionarne pravno-ekonomske doktrine kojom bi se problem neplaćanja prekovremenih sati riješio zatvaranjem dućana nedjeljom. ZAMP-ovim haračem podrazumijeva se da ste lopov jednako kako se HTV-ovom pretplatom podrazumijeva da gledate HTV. Umjesto da hvata poslodavce koji ne plaćaju radnike, Vlada će zatvoriti dućane. Umjesto da hvata piratsku mafiju, Vlada kažnjava legalne kupce s legalnim računom za legalnu robu.

Načelo je primjenjivo na svaku vrstu kriminala. Što će, recimo, onome debelom brki u Mercedesovu salonu teretnih vozila - prazni kamion? Ili prazni kožni novčanik? Vidjeli ste onu bakicu što zagleda teflon tavu od dvadeset kuna: potpuno je jasno da će stara, pokvarena lopuža na njoj pržiti ilegalno kupljena domaća jaja.

Idemo dalje: svatko tko u Pevecu kupi, primjerice, sjekiru, trebao bi odmah platiti i dodatak od kunu-dvije za žrtve obiteljskog nasilja, jer država nije naivna pizda da vam povjeruje kako ćete sjekirom sjeći drva. Muškarci bi, po tom zakonu, na svaki kupljeni kondom plaćali 0,50 kuna naknade za silovane žene. Štoviše, odmah po rođenju plaćali bi porez koji bi se dijelio oštećenim ženama. Nećete valjda reći da vam penis služi samo za pišanje? Ni žene ne bi prošle mnogo bolje. Molim lijepo, dokle god je prostitucija u Hrvatskoj zabranjena - a kako čujem, još uvijek jest - imale bi i žene što plaćati.

Sad vam je valjda jasnije zašto je Sanaderova vlada htjela mimoići zakonsku proceduru i posao sa sportskim dvoranama dodijeliti javno-privatnim partnerima. Mislili ste da će se bez javnih natječaja ti poslovi dijeliti za mnogo veći novac? Naravno da hoće, samo što se ne radi o lopovluku, već - shvatili ste - o prevenciji gospodarskog kriminala. Sasvim dosljedno, onako kako lopovima službeno smatraju svoje građane, Sanaderovi ministri i sami se smatraju lopovima, pa će i poslovi s dvoranama, baš kao i prazni CD-ovi, od sada biti nešto skuplji. Možda smo lopovi, ali nismo pizde: ionako svi znamo da će prazne dvorane pržiti građevinska mafija.

Bit će, najzad, da zbog toga Ivo Sanader - kad javno-privatnim partnerstvima kupuje vrijeme - jedan sat plaća i po 28 tisuća eura.

[repeater]

Seventieth Birthday Speech
Mark Twain, 1905.



The 70th birthday of Mark Twain was a lavish affair held at Delmonico’s restaurant in New York City. In introducing Twain, friend William Dean Howells said, “Now, ladies and gentlemen, and Colonel Harvey, I will try not to be greedy on your behalf in wishing the health of our honored and, in view of his great age, our revered guest. I will not say, ‘Oh King, live forever!’ but ‘Oh King, live as long as you like!’”

There was great applause, and Twain rose to speak:

Well, if I made that joke, it is the best one I ever made, and it is in the prettiest language, too. I never can get quite to that height. But I appreciate that joke, and I shall remember it-and I shall use it when occasion requires.

I have had a great many birthdays in my time. I remember the first one very well, and I always think of it with indignation; everything was so crude, unaesthetic, primeval. Nothing like this at all. No proper appreciative preparation made; nothing really ready. Now, for a person born with high and delicate instincts-why, even the cradle wasn’t whitewashed-nothing ready at all. I hadn’t any hair, I hadn’t any teeth, I hadn’t any clothes, I had to go to my first banquet just like that. Well, everybody came swarming in. It was the merest little bit of a village-hardly that, just a little hamlet, in the backwoods of Missouri, where nothing ever happened, and the people were all interested, and they all came; they looked me over to see if there was anything fresh in my line. Why, nothing ever happened in that village-I-why, I was the only thing that had really happened there for months and months and months; And although I say it myself that shouldn’t, I came the nearest to being a real event that had happened in that village in more than two years. Well, those people came, they came with that curiosity which is so provincial, with that frankness which also is so provincial, and they examined me all around and gave their opinion. Nobody asked them, and I shouldn’t have minded if anybody had paid me a compliment, but nobody did. Their opinions were all just green with prejudice, and I feel those opinions to this day. Well, I stood that as long as- well, you know I was born courteous and I stood it to the limit. I stood it an hour, and then the worm turned. I was the worm; it was my turn to turn, and I turned. I knew very well the strength of my position; I knew that I was the only spotlessly pure and innocent person in that whole town, and I came out and said so. And they could not say a word. It was so true, They blushed; they were embarrassed. Well that was the first after-dinner speech I ever made. I think it was after dinner.

It’s a long stretch between that first birthday speech and this one. That was my cradle-song, and this is my swan-song, I suppose. I am used to swan-songs; I have sung them several times.

This is my seventieth birthday, and I wonder if you all rise to the size of that proposition, realizing all the significance of that phrase, seventieth birthday.

The seventieth birthday! It is the time of life when you arrive at a new and awful dignity; when you may throw aside the decent reserves which have oppressed you for a generation and stand unafraid and unabashed upon your seven-terraced summit and look down and teach- unrebuked. You can tell the world how you got there. It is what they all do. You shall never get tired of telling by what delicate arts and deep moralities you climbed up to that great place. You will explain the process and dwell on the particulars with senile rapture. I have been anxious to explain my own system this long time, and now at last I have the right.

I have achieved my seventy years in the usual way: by sticking strictly to a scheme of life which would kill anybody else. It sounds like an exaggeration, but that is really the common rule for attaining to old age. When we examine the programme of any of these garrulous old people we always find that the habits which have preserved them would have decayed us; that the way of life which enabled them to live upon the property of their heirs so long, as Mr. Choate says, would have put us out of commission ahead of time. I will offer here, as a sound maxim, this: That we can’t reach old age by another man’s road.

I will now teach, offering my way of life to whomsoever desires to commit suicide by the scheme which has enabled me to beat the doctor and the hangman for seventy years. Some of the details may sound untrue, but they are not. I am not here to deceive; I am here to teach.

We have no permanent habits until we are forty. Then they begin to harden, presently they petrify, then business begins. Since forty I have been regular about going to bed and getting up-and that is one of the main things. I have made it a rule to go to bed when there wasn’t anybody left to sit up with; and I have made it a rule to get up when I had to. This has resulted in an unswerving regularity of irregularity. It has saved me sound, but it would injure another person.

In the matter of diet-which is another main thing-I have been persistently strict in sticking to the things which didn’t agree with me until one or the other of us got the best of it. Until lately I got the best of it myself. But last spring I stopped frolicking with mince-pie after midnight; up to then I had always believed it wasn’t loaded. For thirty years I have taken coffee and bread at eight in the morning, and no bite nor sup until seven-thirty in the evening. Eleven hours. That is all right for me, and is wholesome, because I have never had a headache in my life, but headachy people would not reach seventy comfortably by that road, and they would be foolish to try it. And I wish to urge upon you this-which I think is wisdom-that if you find you can’t make seventy by any but an uncomfortable road, don’t you go. When they take off the Pullman and retire you to the rancid smoker, put on your things, count your checks, and get out at the first way station where there’s a cemetery.

I have made it a rule never to smoke more than one cigar at a time. I have no other restriction as regards smoking. I do not know just when I began to smoke, I only know that it was in my father’s lifetime, and that I was discreet. He passed from this life early in 1847, when I was a shade past eleven; ever since then I have smoked publicly. As an example to others, and not that I care for moderation myself, it has always been my rule never to smoke when asleep, and never to refrain when awake. It is a good rule. I mean, for me; but some of you know quite well that it wouldn’t answer for everybody that’s trying to get to be seventy.

I smoke in bed until I have to go to sleep; I wake up in the night, sometimes once, sometimes twice, sometimes three times, and I never waste any of these opportunities to smoke. This habit is so old and dear and precious to me that I would feel as you, sir, would feel if you should lose the only moral you’ve got-meaning the chairman-if you’ve got one: I am making no charges. I will grant, here, that I have stopped smoking now and then, for a few months at a time, but it was not on principle, it was only to show off; it was to pulverize those critics who said I was a slave to my habits and couldn’t break my bonds.

To-day it is all of sixty years since I began to smoke the limit. I have never bought cigars with life-belts around them. I early found that those were too expensive for me. I have always bought cheap cigars-reasonably cheap, at any rate. Sixty years ago they cost me four dollars a barrel, but my taste has improved, latterly, and I pay seven now. Six or seven. Seven, I think. Yes, it’s seven. But that includes the barrel. I often have smoking-parties at my house; but the people that come have always just taken the pledge. I wonder why that is?

As for drinking, I have no rule about that. When the others drink I like to help; otherwise I remain dry, by habit and preference. This dryness does not hurt me, but it could easily hurt you, because you are different. You let it alone.

Since I was seven years old I have seldom taken a dose of medicine, and have still seldomer needed one. But up to seven I lived exclusively on allopathic medicines. Not that I needed them, for I don’t think I did; it was for economy; my father took a drug-store for a debt, and it made cod-liver oil cheaper than the other breakfast foods. We had nine barrels of it, and it lasted me seven years. Then. I was weaned. The rest of the family had to get along with rhubarb and ipecac and such things, because I was the pet. I was the first Standard Oil Trust. I had it all. By the time the drug store was exhausted my health was established, and there has never been much the matter with, me since. But you know very well it would be foolish for the average child to start for seventy on that basis. It happened to be just the thing for me, but that was merely an accident; it couldn’t happen again in a century.

I have never taken any exercise, except sleeping and resting, and I never intend to take any. Exercise is loathsome. And it cannot be any benefit when you are tired; and I was always tired. But let another person try my way, and see where he will come out.

I desire now to repeat and emphasize that maxim: We can’t reach old age by another man’s road. My habits protect my life, but they would assassinate you.

I have lived a severely moral life. But it would be a mistake for other people to try that, or for me to recommend it. Very few would succeed: you have to have a perfectly colossal stock of morals; and you can’t get them on a margin; you have to have the whole thing, and put them in your box. Morals are an acquirement-like music, like a foreign language, like piety, poker, paralysis-no man is born with them. I wasn’t myself, I started poor. I hadn’t a single moral. There is hardly a man in this house that is poorer than I was then. Yes, I started like that-the world before me, not a moral in the slot. Not even an insurance moral. I can remember the first one I ever got. I can remember the landscape, the weather, the-I can remember how everything looked. It was an old moral, an old second-hand moral, all out of repair, and didn’t fit, anyway. But if you are careful with a thing like that, and keep it in a dry place, and save it for processions, and Chautauquas, and World’s Fairs, and so on, and disinfect it now and then, and give it a fresh coat of whitewash once in a while, you will be surprised to see how well she will last and how long she will keep sweet, or at least inoffensive. When I got that mouldy old moral, she had stopped growing, because she hadn’t any exercise; but I worked her hard, I worked her Sundays and all. Under this cultivation she waxed in might and stature beyond belief, and served me well and was my pride and joy for sixty-three years; then she got to associating with insurance presidents, and lost flesh and character, and was a sorrow to look at and no longer competent for business. She was a great loss to me. Yet not all loss. I sold her-ah, pathetic skeleton, as she was-I sold her to Leopold, the pirate King of Belgium; he sold her to our Metropolitan Museum, and it was very glad to get her, for without a rag on, she stands 57 feet long and 16 feet high, and they think she’s a brontosaur. Well, she looks it. They believe it will take nineteen geological periods to breed her match.

Morals are of inestimable value, for every man is born crammed with sin microbes, and the only thing that can extirpate these sin microbes is morals. Now you take a sterilized Christian-I mean, you take the sterilized Christian, for there’s only one. Dear sir, I wish you wouldn’t look at me like that.

Threescore years and ten!

It is the Scriptural statute of limitations. After that, you owe no active duties; for you the strenuous life is over. You are a time-expired man, to use Kipling’s military phrase: You have served your term, well or less well, and you are mustered out. You are become an honorary member of the republic, you are emancipated, compulsions are not for you, not any bugle-call but “lights out.” You pay the time-worn duty bills if you choose, or decline if you prefer-and without prejudice-for they are not legally collectable.

The previous-engagement plea, which in forty years has cost you so many twinges, you can lay aside forever; on this side of the grave you will never need it again. If you shrink at the thought of night and winter, and the late home-coming from the banquet and the lights and the laughter through the deserted streets-a desolation which would not remind you now, as for a generation it did, that your friends are sleeping, and you must creep in a-tiptoe and not disturb them, but would only remind you that you need not tiptoe, you can never disturb them more-if you shrink at thought of these things, you need only reply, “Your invitation honors me, and pleases me because you still keep me in your remembrance”, but I am seventy; seventy, and would nestle in the chimney-corner, and smoke my pipe, and read my book, and take my rest, wishing you well in all affection, and that when you in your return shall arrive at pier No. 70 you may step aboard your waiting ship with a reconciled spirit, and lay your course toward the sinking sun with a contented heart.

[Fair Life]

Osoba tjedna: STIPE MESIĆ
26. travnja, 2007.

To je zbilja zadnje što se smjelo dogoditi. Da se komemoracija za žrtve
jasenovačkog logora pretvori u ring za dnevnopolitičke obračune, i to među
onima koji inače poštuju te žrtve, ili barem tako izgleda kada ih slušate što
o tome govore.

Koliko je to jadno, valjda će i njima biti jasno kada im se kaže da je
zahvaljujući tome sasvim palo u drugi plan da je Katolička crkva i ovaj put
izbjegla da bude dostojno reprezentirana u Jasenovcu. Ali će zato
nadbiskup Bozanić za dva tjedna prvi put pribivati komemoraciji na
Bleiburgu, još jednom jasno pokazujući da se po Kaptolu samo ondje ginulo
za Hrvatsku.

Mrtvi Jasenovca, uključujući djecu, pali su po tim kukavnim kalkulantima
valjda za komunizam i Srbo-slaviju, što li?! No, koliko god to uporno
poništavanje i ponižavanje jasenovačkih žrtava šljapkalo po dnu moralne
kaljuže, zadnji koji će protiv toga smjeti podići glas bit će neki sudionici
nedjeljne komemoracije u Jasenovcu.

Jer, i oni su uvrijedili žrtve logora na Savi koliko god će vam skočiti u oči ako
im to kažete. Ovaj put, međutim, ništa i ne treba reći, sve govore suhe
činjenice. U Jasenovcu je protokolom bilo predviđeno da molitvu i govor
održe oba rabina odnedavno ljuto posvađene i razdvojene židovske općine
u Zagrebu.

Ali, nakon što je svoje obavio rabin Kotel Da Don, rabin suparnik Zwye
Eliezer Alonie to je odbio učiniti zbog, poslije su u posebnom pismu objavili
njegovi pristaše i adlatusi, "ponižavajućeg protokola", "neprimjerenog
govora" Da Dona i njegovog šlepanja uz vlast. Za svaku od tih optužbi
precizno su navedeni i nekakvi argumenti, ali pravo da vam kažemo ne
pada nam na pamet u to ulaziti.

Naprosto, obje strane (iako ipak više ova druga) ne zaslužuju da se čovjek
njima bavi dok god ne shvate da Jasenovac nije prostor za izravnavanje
njihovih političko-religioznih računa. Možda jedino riječ-dvije, jer to se ne da
izbjeći, o optužbama te druge strane da su se spomenuti promašaji u
protokolu dogodili u Mesićevoj režiji.

Točno je da se Mesić svojedobno lakomisleno i potpuno nepotrebno upleo u
sukob dviju posvađanih židovskih grupa, ali u ovoj nedjeljnoj sramoti u
Jasenovcu jednostavno se ni pod lupom ne vidi njegove krivice. Doduše,
mora se reći da je ovo bio njegov prvi posjet nekadašnjem logoru nakon
afere s pjevanjem ustaških pjesama u ranim devedesetim, i to je za nj
zbilja bio izlazak na klizak teren.

Ali, standardno jasnim jasenovačkim govorom, pa i packom na račun Ljube
Jurčića što se diči ustaškom prošlošću ujaka a taji partizansku prošlost
vlastitog oca – i to je stavio iza sebe. Dakle, Mesićeva reputacija prvog
hrvatskog antifašista ponovno funkcionira, a za ostale iz ove priče baš i ne
znamo.

U svakom slučaju, bilo bi im bolje da više brinu o sebi nego o njemu.

Marinko ČULIĆ

[repeater]

vodeni, for you ...


Are You There, God? It's Me, Hitchens.
Christopher Hitchens on religion (no thanks), Iraq (not a mistake), and his own loud reputation.
By Boris Kachka

One of the most annoying things about Christopher Hitchens is that, even at his most vitriolic, he makes at least as much sense as the majority of sober journo-intellectuals buzzing around Washington. This despite the fact that he is one of the last defenders of Bush’s Iraq war—a position that has cost the former Nation contributor a multitude of friends and gotten him new ones like Paul Wolfowitz. Hitchens, who started questioning his faith at age 9 (and wrote a polemic against Mother Teresa called The Missionary Position), has finally written the ultimate attack book, God Is Not Great. He spoke to us about his favorite religious stories, Karl Rove (infidel?), and the one time he found himself praying.


You say in your acknowledgments that you’ve been writing this book your whole life. Do you think it’ll mean as much to others as it means to you?
-- No, it’s one small step for C.H. into one enormous argument dominated by giants in philosophy and theology and science.


So what makes it different from recent atheist screeds by the likes of Daniel Dennett and Richard Dawkins?
-- I don’t think Richard Dawkins would mind me saying that he looks at religious people with this sort of incredulity, as if, “How possibly can you be so stupid?” And though we all have moods like that, I think perhaps I don’t quite.


And what if one of your children found God? Would that be a problem?
-- Not at all. My children, to the extent that they have found religion, have found it from me, in that I insist on at least a modicum of religious education for them. The schools won’t do it anymore. And I even insist, though my wife [who is Jewish] isn’t that thrilled, on having for our daughter a little version of the Seder.


What’s your favorite Bible story?
-- “Casting the first stone” is a lovely story, even though we’ve found out how much it wasn’t in the Bible to begin with. And the first of the miracles. Jesus changes water into wine. You can’t object to that.


Well, you’ve said plenty about the pleasures of drink before.
-- But it also shows the persistence of the Hellenic influence in those regions. If the Jews had not made the crucial mistake of rejecting Hellenism and philosophy and submitting themselves, or being reconquered, by the Maccabean ultra-Orthodox, everything would have been better and we’d never have had to endure Christianity and Islam.


So I guess you’re not a fan of Hanukkah.
-- And they picked it for the worst possible reason, because it happens to be nearest to Christmas! I mean, it’s so tawdry.


You’re an even bigger critic of Islam.
-- If you ask specifically what is wrong with Islam, it makes the same mistakes as the preceding religions, but it makes another mistake, which is that it’s unalterable. You notice how liberals keep saying, “If only Islam would have a Reformation”—it can’t have one. It says it can’t. It’s extremely dangerous in that way.


Do you think an avowed atheist would ever get elected in the U.S.?
-- Yes. I do not believe any of the statistical claims that are made about public opinion. I don’t see why anybody does.


Has anyone in the Bush administration confided in you about being an atheist?
-- Well, I don’t talk that much to them—maybe people think I do. I know something which is known to few but is not a secret. Karl Rove is not a believer, and he doesn’t shout it from the rooftops, but when asked, he answers quite honestly. I think the way he puts it is, “I’m not fortunate enough to be a person of faith.”


What must Bush make of that?
-- I think it’s false to say that the president acts as if he believes he has God’s instructions. Compared to Jimmy Carter, he’s nowhere. He’s a Methodist, having joined his wife’s church in the end. He also claims that Jesus got him off the demon drink. He doesn’t believe it. His wife said, “If you don’t stop, I’m leaving and I’m taking the kids.” You can say that you got help from Jesus if you want, but that’s just a polite way of putting it in Texas.


Do you consider yourself a hawk?
-- I used to wish there was a useful term for those of us who thought American power should be used to remove psychopathic dictators.


So one day we’ll all see just how right you all were about Iraq?
-- No, I don’t think the argument will stop, perhaps forever. But when it does become the property of historians rather than propagandists and journalists, it’ll become plainer than it is to most people now that it was just. Most of what went wrong with it was that it was put off too long. What a lot of people wish is that the thing could have been skipped.


Or that Bush hadn’t been in charge. You don’t believe that?
-- No, I honestly don’t. Iraq was in such terrible shape as a society that it wouldn’t have mattered if Paul Bremer had been Pericles.


Is there anything you don’t have an opinion on?
-- My bet with Graydon [Carter, Vanity Fair editor-in-chief] is that he can ask me to write about anything at all, unless it’s mathematics or science.


Will you write about Virginia Tech?
-- I have no interest in it, but if it goes on for a couple of days I will. My heart sinks when yellow-ribbon events occur, if that doesn’t sound too cynical. What one needs in this society is less sentimentality and more stoicism. [He did write a Slate column last week, headlined SUCK IT UP.]


You’ve complained that American discourse is too polite. But a lot of people think you’re too rude.
-- I used to get told by nice old ladies at bookstores, “It’s so nice to meet you, because I used to think you were very unhappy and just disliked everything, and you seem quite friendly.” And I would think, Oh, God, is that how I seem?


You did write a book called Letters to a Young Contrarian.
-- I was contrarian enough to say that I thought contrarianism was a stupid title. But the idea that I think How can I enhance my reputation today by thinking of a famous person to trash?—if you thought that about me, I would feel I’d lost somehow. With Mother Teresa, the subject picked me. But I have written books positive about, say, George Orwell and Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine …


But those people are all dead.
-- Now you’ll have to let me brood on that … I do have a reply—did you think I would completely fail you? Rushdie, Mr. Amis, Mr. McEwan—but it is known that I’m friendly with them, so I get trashed another way: “Oh, well, you’re just sticking up for your pals.”


Have you ever prayed in your life?
-- I probably once did pray for an erection, but not addressed to anyone in particular. Nor completely addressed to my cock. You’re too polite to ask if the prayer was answered.


Was it?
-- No. There was an answer, but I don’t think it was the result of the prayer. After all, if one was not a mammal, and could get erections on demand, there’d be no need for prayer in the first place.

http://www.nymag.com/arts/books/features/31244

[Fair Life]

U ZEMLJI SUPERHIKA

PIŠE: SAMIR ŠESTAN

Sirotinja nikad nije toliko siromašna da joj se još nešto ne bi moglo uzeti,
programska je platforma pod kojom je u Alanu Fordu, legendarnom strip
izdanju koje je ideološki obrazovalo svu onu socijalističku omladinu što je
nisu uspjeli poslati u kumrovačku i srodne joj škole, nastupao pervertirani
kapitalistički Robin Hud – Superhik, koji je krao od sirotinje da bi davao
bogatima, ne bi li ovi bili još malo bogatiji.

Ima tome podosta kako je umro lokalni zaštitnik svih ovdašnjih lopova, ali
broj onih koji kradu gdje god šta mogu i od koga mogu ne smanjuje se, niti
se isti povlače i skrivaju.

Bande pljačkaša čak su toliko cinične i bezobrazne da nas, kroz usta svojih
predvodnika, uvjeravaju da je to što nas oni pljačkaju u stvari u našem
interesu i da oni nama čine uslugu, posežući u naš a trpajući u svoj džep
brane državu i da treba da smo im zahvalni na tome.

Praktično nam ne preostaje ništa drugo nego da se goli i bosi još naguzimo.
Što ovaj narod, pristojan, disciplinovan i zahvalan, kakav jeste (i, hvala
bogu, pametan kakvim ga je Bog stvorio) i radi.

Predprvomajski ponovni pokušaj da se uvedu diferencirane stope PDV-a, tj.
da se ukine porez na siromaštvo i kulturu, završio je isto kao i oni raniji –
neuspjehom. Branioci stava o jedinstvenoj stopi koja izjednačava hljeb i
najnovijeg audija i u isti rang dovodi narodne kuhinje i luksuz u kome žive
naši gangsteri (što politički, što oni opšte prakse), kažu kako bi smanjenje
poreza na hljeb, mlijeko, lijekove, hranu za bebe, humanitarnu pomoć,
knjige... ugrozilo finansijsku stabilnost države (????).

Dakle, finansijsku stabilnost države ne ugrožava birokratsko-politička aždaja
koja proždire sve oko sebe (uključujući društvenu supstancu), finansijsku
stabilnost države ne ugožava najnovija odluka Vlade Federacije da poveća
plate i naknade u javnom sektoru za 22 posto, finansijsku stabilnost države
ne ugrožava pohlapa poslanika koji bi da se za jednog mandata finansijski
obezbijede za čitav život, finansijsku stabilnost države ne ugrožava činjenica
da već desetljeće i po naše vlade ne rade ništa da pokrenu posrnulu
privredu i pomognu njenom ozdravljenju, finansijsku stabilnost države ne
ugrožava Dodikova odluka da nabavi ergelu najnovijih audijevih konja u
situaciji u kojoj mu je po Helsinškom odboru za ljudska prava, 60 posto
građana boljeg dijela Bosne i Hercegovine - socijalno obespravljeno,
finansijsku stabilnost države ne ugrožava činjenica da je jedina stvar koja
interesuje naše političare kako napuniti budžet (te ga spičkati po kratkom
postupku),... Ne, ništa od toga ne ugrožava finansijsku stabilnost države.
Finansijska stabilnost države, biće ugrožena tek ako Merhametova ili
Caritasova kuhinja ne plati porez na obroke koje kuha gladnoj sirotinji, ako
penzioneri budu u mjesec dana mogli kupiti još po 3 hljeba i litar mlijeka
više, ako država ne bude uzimala svojih 17% od bolesnih i umirućih u ovoj
zemlji i od svake novorođene bebe,...??? Kao što bi (ta finansijska
stabilnost) bila ugrožena da se prikupljena sredstva od poreza, umjesto na
povećanje plata političara i administrativnog aparata i poslove sa raznim
jatama, troši na socijalne programe, na zaustavljanje stravičnog pada
nataliteta, na pomoć poljoprivredi, na razvojne projekte, na obrazovanje,
kulturu,...

No, srećom, mi imamo patriote na vlasti koji se trude i uspijevaju da zaštite
državu od ataka opozicije i zlonamjernih pojedinaca, koji žele da je unište i
tim smanjenjem PDV-a i nametanjem onog nedemokratskog Zakona o
oduzimanju nezakonito stečene imovine.

Kao što srećom imamo političare i medije koji će nam kazati da nema
potrebe da se bavimo ovim pitanjima kad imamo mnogo važnija – kako će
se zvati policija u RS-u i da li Marko Perković Thompson svirati ili neće
svirati u Sarajevu, recimo.

Onaj kojem je dobro nikad neće razumjeti onog kojem je loše, savršeno je
definisao odnose u našem društvu i ponašanje naših političara prema
narodu u čijem interesu bi kao trebali da rade, strari rudar zeničkog rudnika
uglja, za vrijeme nedavnog štrajka u jednoj od tamošnjih jama. I ne samo
da ga neće razumjeti, dodali bismo, nego ga za njim i zaboli... PDV!

PS

U svijetu će i ovaj Prvi maj proći u žestokim demonstracijama radnika, u
kojima će sigurno biti i povrijeđenih i uhapšenih. Samo kod nas će radnici, i
oni koji to samo sanjati mogu da će jednog dana postati, godišnjicu velikih
čikaških radničkih demonstracija, koje su se proširile i na druge američke
gradove i obuhvatile 350.000 radnika iz 1.200 fabrika i u kojima je na
radnički zahtjev za osmosatnim radnim danom odgovoreno pucanjem u
masu policije u službi krupnog kapitala i njihovih političkih zaštitnika
(demonstracija koje se tretiraju kao simbol stoljetne radničke borbe za
svoja prava, ispunjene žrtvama, odricanjem, borbom), obilježiti - teferičem,
okretanjem živine i stoke sitnog zuba na ražnjevima, turbo-hitovima
srbijanskih pjevaljki, putovanjima u Dubrovnik i Istanbul, opijanjem po
vikendicama i, eventualno, sindikalnim šupljiranjem i kuhanjem graha. A
sutradan ćemo kukati na vlast koju smo sami izabrali (i opet ćemo, istu,
pokazujući da zaslužujemo sve što nam se dešava) i od međunarodne
zajednice očekivati i zahtijevati(!) da nam pomogne, kako nas je lijepo
Haris naučio. No, ni do slobode, ni do ljudskih, građanskih, ni radničkih
prava se ne dolazi bez borbe. Između ostalog, protiv onih koji zahtjev za
smanjenje stope PDV-a na osnovne životne namirnice tretiraju kao
destabilizaciju budžeta, što bi po njima moglo biti pogubno po BiH. A u
stvari, moglo bi biti pogubno jedino po nezaježljivu političku elitu i
korumpirani aparat koji ih opslužuje a koji se ponašaju kao gomila ludaka
sa motorkama u rukama kojima režu grane na kojima sjede.